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PI ECES OF HATE 

HEYWOOD BROUN 



PIECES OF HATE 

And Other Enthusiasms 
By HEYWOOD BROUN 



Gf&D 



GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 1922 NEW YORK 






■I- 



COPYRIGHT, 1922, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



PIECES OF HATE. I 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



AUG -3 72 



©CI.A681217 
^t f 



TO MY FATHER 
HEYWOOD C. BROUN 



PREFACE 

The trouble with prefaces is that they are partial 
and so we have decided to offer instead an unbiased 
review of "Pieces of Hate." The publishers have 
kindly furnished us advance proofs for this purpose. 

We wish we could speak with unreserved enthu- 
siasm about this book. It would be pleasant to make 
out a list of three essential volumes for humanity and 
suggest the complete works of William Shakespeare, 
the Bible and "Pieces of Hate," but Mr. Broun's 
book does not deserve any such ranking. Speak- 
ing as a critic of books, we are not at all sure that 
we care to recommend it. It seems to us that the 
author is honest, but the value of that quality has been 
vastly overstressed in present-day reviewing. We are 
inclined to say "What of it?" There would be noth- 
ing particularly persuasive if a man should approach 
a poker game and say, "Won't you let Broun in; I 
can assure he's honest." Why should a recommen- 
dation which is taken for granted among common 
gamblers be considered flattering when applied to a 
writer? 

Anyhow, it does not seem to us that Broun carries 
honesty to excess. There is every indication that 
most of the work in "Pieces of Hate" has been 
done so hurriedly that there has been no oppor- 
tunity for a recount. If it balances at any given 

vii 



PREFACE 

point luck must be with him as well as virtue. All 
the vices of haste are in this book of stories, critical 
essays and what not. The author is not content to 
stalk down an idea and salt it. Whenever he sees 
what he believes to be a notion he leaves his feet and 
tries to bring it down with a flying tackle. Occa- 
sionally there actually is an exciting and interesting 
crash of flying bodies coming into contact. But just 
as often Mr. Broun misses his mark and falls on his 
face. At other times he gets the object of his dive 
only to find that it was not a genuine idea after all, 
but only a straw man, a sort of tackling dummy set 
up to fool and educate novices. 

And Broun does not learn fast. Like most news- 
paper persons he is an extraordinary mixture of 
sophistication and naivete. At one moment he will 
be found belaboring a novelist or a dramatist for 
sentimentality and on the next page there will be 
distinct traces of treacle in his own creative work. 
Seemingly, what he means when he says that he does 
not like sentimentality is that he doesn't like the sen- 
timentality of anybody else. He would restrict the 
quality to the same narrow field as charity. 

The various forms introduced into the book are a 
little confusing. Seemingly there has been no plan 
as to the sequence of stories, essays, dramatic criti- 
cism and the rest. Possibly the author regards this 
as versatility, but here is another vastly overrated 
quality. We once had a close friend who was a 
magician and after we had watched him take an 
omelet out of his high hat, and two white rabbits, and 
a bowl of goldfish, it always made us a little uneasy 

viii 



PREFACE 

when he said, "Wait a minute until I put on my hat 
and I'll walk home with you." 

The fear constantly lurked in our mind that he 
might suddenly remember, in the middle of Times 
Square, that he had forgotten a trick and be com- 
pelled to pause and take a boa-constrictor from under 
the sweat-band. We suggest to Mr. Broun that he 
make up his mind as to just what he intends to do 
and then stick to it to the exclusion of all sidelines. 

Perhaps he has promised, but we are prepared to 
wager nothing on him until we are convinced that he 
has begun to drive for something. He may be a 
young man but he is not so young that he can afford 
to traffic any further with flipness under the impres- 
sion that it is something just as good as humor. And 
we wish he wouldn't pun. George H. Doran, the pub- 
lisher, informs us that he had to plead with Broun 
to make him leave out a chapter on the ugliness of 
heirlooms and particularly old sofas. Apparently 
the piece was written for no other purpose than to 
carry the title "The Chintz of the Fathers." 

We also find Mr. Broun's pose as the professional 
Harvard man a little bit trying, particularly as ex- 
pressed in his essay "The Bigger the Year." We 
suppose he may be expected to outgrow this in time 
but he has been long enough about it." 

Heywood Broun. 



IX 



Some of these articles have appeared in 
the New York World, the New York 
Tribune, Vanity Fair, Collier's Weekly, 
The Bookman and Judge, and acknowl- 
edgment is made to these publications for 
permission to reprint. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I THE NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHEIK 17 

II JOHN ROACH STRATON 23 

III PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF OFFSPRING 26 

IV G. K. C. 30 
V ON BEING A GOD 35 

VI CHIVALRY IS BORN 40 

VII RUTH VS. ROTH 45 

VIII THE BIGGER THE YEAR 49 

IX FOR OLD NASSAU 54 

X MR. DEMPSEY'S FIVE-FOOT SHELF 58 

XI SPORT FOR ART'S SAKE 64 

XII JACK THE GIANT KILLER 70 

XIII JUDGE KRINK 76 

XIV FRANKINCENSE AND MYRRH 79 
XV THE EXCELSIOR MOVEMENT 82 

XVI THE DOG STAR 86 

XVII ALTRUISTIC POKER 90 

XVIII THE WELL MADE REVUE 92 

XIX AN ADJECTIVE A DAY 96 

XX THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER 99 

XXI A TORTOISE SHELL, HOME 101 

XXII I'D DIE FOR DEAR OLD RUTGERS 106 

XXIII ARE EDITORS PEOPLE? Ill 

XXIV WE HAVE WITH US THIS EVENING — 116 

XXV THE YOUNG PESSIMISTS 124 

XXVI GLASS SLIPPERS BY THE GROSS 130 

xi 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

XXVII A MODERN BEANSTALK 

XXVIII VOLSTEAD AND CONVERSATION 

XXIX LIFE, THE COPY CAT 

XXX THE ORTHODOX CHAMPION 

XXXI WITH A STEIN ON THE TABLE 

XXXII ART FOR ARGUMENT'S SAKE 

XXXIII NO RAHS FOR RAY 

XXXIV "AT ABOY!" 

XXXV HOW TO WIN MONEY AT THE RACES 

XXXVI ONE TOUCH OF SLAPSTICK 

XXXVII DANGER SIGNALS FOR READERS 

XXXVIII ADVENTURE MADE PAINLESS 

XXXIX THE TALL VILLA 

XL PROFESSOR GEORGE PIERCE BAKER 

XLI WHAT SHAKESPEARE MISSED 

XLII CENSORING THE CENSOR 



PAGE 

134 
137 

143 
149 
153 
159 
165 
170 
174 
178 
183 
188 
197 
202 
207 
222 



Xll 



PIECES OF HATE 



THE NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHEIK 

Women must be peculiar people, if that. We have 
just finished "The Sheik," which is described on the 
jacket as possessing "all the intense passion and 
tender feeling of the most vivid love stories, almost 
brutal in its revelations." 

Naturally, we read it. The author is English and 
named E. M. Hull. The publishers expand the "E" 
to Ethel, but we have a theory of our own. At any 
rate the novelist displays an extraordinary knowledge 
of feminine psychology. It is profound. It is also 
a little disturbing because it sounds so silly. After 
all, whether peculiar or not women are round about 
us almost everywhere, and we must make the best 
of them. Accordingly, it terrifies us to learn that 
if by any chance whatsoever we happen to hit one 
of them and knock her down she will become devoted 
to us forever. The man who knows this will think 
twice before he strikes a woman no matter what the 
provocation. He will be inclined to count ten before 
letting a blow go instead of after. Miss Hull's book 
deserves the widest possible circulation because of 

17 



PIECES OF HATE 

its persuasive propaganda for forebearance on the 
part of men in their dealings with women. 

Seemingly, there are no exceptions to the rules 
about women laid down by Miss Hull. To state her 
theory concisely, the quickest way to reach a woman's 
heart is a right hook to the jaw. To take a specific 
instance, there was Miss Diana Mayo. She seemed 
an exception to the rule if ever a woman did. "My 
God, Diana! Beauty like yours drives a man mad!" 
said Arbuthnot, the young British lieutenant, in the 
moonlight at Biskra. More than that, "He whis- 
pered ardently, his hands closing over the slim ones 
lying in her lap." Those were her own. 

Still, Diana was no miss to take a hint. With a 
strength that seemed impossible for their slimness 
she disengaged her hands from his grasp. "Please 
stop. I am sorry. We have been good friends, and 
it has never occurred to me that there could be any- 
thing beyond that. I never thought that you might 
love me. I never thought of you in that way at all. 
I don't understand it. When God made me he 
omitted to give me a heart. I have never loved any 
one in my life." 

That was before Miss Diana Mayo went into the 
desert and met the Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan. The 
meeting was unconventional. Ahmed sacked the 
caravan and kidnapped Diana, seizing her off her 
horse's back at full gallop. "His movement had been 
so quick she was unprepared and unable to resist. 
For a moment she was stunned, then her senses came 
back to her and she struggled wildly, but stifled in 
the thick folds of the Arab's robes, against which her 

18 



THE NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHEIK 

face was crushed, and held in a grip that seemed to 
be slowly suffocating her, her struggles were futile. 
The hard, muscular arm around her hurt her acutely, 
her ribs seemed to be almost breaking under its 
weight and strength, it was nearly impossible to 
breathe with the close contact of his body." 

But Diana did not love him yet. She seems to 
have been less susceptible than most girls. Even 
when "her whole body was one agonized ache from 
the brutal hands" she persisted in not caring for 
Ahmed Ben Hassan. It almost seemed as if she had 
taken a dislike to the man. Up to this time she had 
not learned to make allowances for him. It was 
much later than this that "She looked at the marks 
of his fingers on the delicate skin with a twist of the 
lips, then shut her eyes with a little gasp and hid her 
bruised arm hastily, her mouth quivering. But she 
did not blame him; she had brought it on herself; 
she knew his mood and he did not know his own 
strength." 

Diana's realization that she loved the Sheik Ahmed 
Ben Hassan and had loved him for some time came 
under sudden and dramatic circumstances. She was 
running away from him at the time and he was riding 
after her. Standing up in the stirrups, the Sheik 
shot the horse from under her and "Diana was flung 
far forward and landed on some soft sand." But 
even yet her blindness to the whispering of love per- 
sisted. She thought she hated Ahmed, but dawn 
was about to break in her starved heart. "He caught 
her wrist and flung her out of the way," yet it was 
not until he had lifted her up on the saddle in front 

19 



PIECES OF HATE 

of him, using his favorite hold-— a half nelson and 
body scissors — that the punishing nature of the 
familiar grip roused Diana to an understanding of 
her great good fortune. "Quite suddenly she knew — 
knew that she loved him, that she had loved him for a 
long time, even when she thought that she hated him 
and when she had fled from him. She knew now 
why his face had haunted her in the little oasis at 
midday — that it was love calling to her sub- 
consciously." And all the time poor, foolish 
Diana had imagined that it was arnica which she 
wanted. 

Even after Ben Hassan had succeeded in impress- 
ing Diana with his affection, we feared that the story 
would not end happily. While riding some miles 
away from their own carefully restricted oasis Diana 
was captured by another Arab chief named Ibraheim 
Omair. It seemed to us that he was in his way just 
as persuasive a wooer as Ben Hassan. We read, 
"He forced her to her knees, and, with his hand 
twined brutally in her curls, thrust her head back," 
and later, "She realized that he was squeezing the 
life out of her." Worst of all from the point of view 
of a Ben Hassan partisan (and by this time we too 
had learned to love him) was the moment in which 
Omair dashed his hand against Diana's mouth, for 
the author records that "She caught it in her teeth, 
biting it to the bone." We feared, then, that Diana's 
heart was turning to this new and wondrously rowdy 
Arab. Already it was quite evident that she was 
not indifferent to him. Fortunately Ahmed came 
in time to shoot Omair before Diana's Uncon- 

20 



THE NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHEIK 

scious could flash to her any realization of a new 
love. 

And the book does end happily, even more happily 
than anybody has a right to expect. Ahmed is badly 
wounded but only in the head, and recovers without 
any impairment of his punching power. The greatest 
surprise of all is reserved for the last chapter, when 
Diana and the reader learn that Ben isn't really an 
Arab at all, but the eldest son of Lord Glencaryll, 
and of Lady Glencaryll, too, for that matter. It 
seems Lord Glencaryll drank excessively, although 
his title was one of the oldest in England. Lady 
Glencaryll left him on account of his alcoholism and 
went to the Sahara desert for rest and contrast. A 
courtly sheik gave her shelter in his oasis. Here her 
son was born, and when he heard about his father's 
disgraceful conduct he turned Arab and stayed that 
way. Of course, if he had intended nothing more 
than a protest against overindulgence in alcoholic 
liquors he could have turned American. We suppose 
such a device would not have seemed altogether 
plausible. No Englishman could pass for an Ameri- 
can. Nor can we say that we are altogether satisfied 
with the ending even as it stands. For all we know 
E. M. Hull may decide to take a shot at Uncle Tom's 
Cabin and add a chapter revealing the fact that 
Uncle Tom was not actually a colored man but the 
child of a couple of Caucasians who had happened to 
get a little sunburned. We are not even sure that 
E. M. Hull is a woman. Publishers do get fooled 
about such things. According to our theory, the E 
stands for Egbert. He is, we think, at least five feet 

21 



PIECES OF HATE 

four inches tall and lives in Bloomsbury, in very 
respectable bachelor diggings. He has never been 
to the desert or near it, but if "The Sheik" continues 
to run through new editions he plans to take a jaunt 
to the East. He thinks it might help his hay fever. 



22 



II 

JOHN ROACH STRATON 

In the course of his Sabbath day talk at Calvary 
Baptist Church the other day the Rev. Dr. John 
Roach Straton spoke of "miserable Charlie Chaplin," 
or words to that effect. This seems to us an expres- 
sion of the more or less natural antipathy of a man 
who regards life trivially for a serious artist. It is 
the venom of the clown confronted by the comedian. 

Dr. Straton is, of course, an utter materialist. He 
is concerned with such temporal and evanescent 
things as hellfire, and a heaven which he has pictured 
in one of his sermons as a sort of glorified Coney 
Island. Moreover, he has created a deity in his own 
image and has presented the invisible king as merely 
a somewhat more mannerly John Roach Straton. And 
while Dr. Straton has been thus engaged in debasing 
the ideals of mankind, Charlie Chaplin has brought 
to great masses of people some glint of things which 
are eternal. He has managed to show us beauty and, 
better than that, he has contrived to put us at ease in 
this presence. We belong to a Nation which is tim- 
orous of beauty, but Charlie has managed to soothe 
our fears by proving to us that it may also be merry. 

While Straton has been talking about jazz, de- 
bauchery, modesty, vengeance and other ugly things, 

23 



PIECES OF HATE 

Chaplin has given us the story of a child. "The Kid" 
captured a little of that curiously exalted something 
which belongs to paternity. All spiritual things must 
have in them a childlike quality. The belief in 
immortality rests not very much on the hope of going 
on. Few of us want to do that, but we would like 
very much to begin again. 

Naturally, we are under no delusions as to the 
innate goodness even of very small children. They 
are bad a great deal of the time, but before it has 
been knocked out of them they see no limit to the 
potentialities of the human will. Theirs is the faith 
to move mountains, because they do not yet know the 
fearful heft of them. The world is merely a rather 
big sandpile and much may be done to it with a tin 
pail and shovel. We would capture such confidence 
again. 

As a matter of fact, a great deal could be done 
with a pail and shovel. We do not try because we 
have lost our nerve. Nobody will ever get it back 
again by listening to Dr. Straton. He seems solely 
intent upon detailing the limitations and the frailties 
of man. We think he has outgrown his soul a little. 
He has sold his birthright for a mess of potterism. 

But Charlie Chaplin moves through the world which 
he pictures on the screen like a mischievous child. 
He confounds all the gross villains who come against 
him. His smile is a token and a symbol that man is 
too merry to die utterly. Fearful things menace us, 
but they will flee before the audacious one who has 
the fervor to draw back his foot and let it fly. 

Of course, we are not advocating any suppression 
24 



JOHN ROACH STRATON 

of Dr. Straton by censorship. We regard him and 
his sermons as a bad influence. But after all, the 
man or woman who strays into Dr. Straton's church 
knows what to expect. In justice to the clergyman it 
must be said that he has never made any secret of his 
methods or his message. There is no deception. 
Sentimentally, we think it rather shocking that these 
talks of his should occur on Sunday. There really 
ought to be one day of the week upon which the 
citizens of New York turn away from frivolity. And 
still we do not urge that the Sunday Law be amended 
to include the performances of John Roach Straton. 
He is not one whit worse than some of the sensational 
Sunday magazines. 



25 



Ill 

PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF OFFSPRING 

Fannie Hurst gurgles with joy over the fact that 
her heroine in "Star Dust" is able to look over the 
whole tray of babies which is brought to her in the 
hospital and pick out her own. Miss Hurst attributes 
Lily's feat to "her mother instinct." A friend of 
ours, more practically minded than the novelist, sug- 
gests that she might have been aided by the fact that 
hospitals invariably place an identification tag around 
the neck of each child. For our part we have never 
been able to understand the fear of some parents 
about babies getting mixed up in the hospital. What 
difference does it make so long as you get a good 
one? Another's may be better than your own and 
Lily, with a whole tray from which to choose, should 
not have made an instinctive clutch immmediately 
for her own. It would have been rational for the 
lady in the story to have looked at them all before 
coming to any decision. 

Of course, to tell the truth, there isn't much choice 
in the little ones. They need much more than neck- 
laces with names on them to be persons. There 
really ought to be some system whereby small chil- 
dren after being born could be kept in the shop for 

26 



OWNERSHIP OF OFFSPRING 

a considerable period, like puppies, and not turned 
over to parents or guardians until in a condition 
more disciplined than usual. None of them amounts 
to much during the first year. We can't see, for 
the life of us, why your own should be any more 
interesting or precious to you during this time than 
the child of anybody else. 

After two, of course, they are persons, but a parent 
must have a good deal of imagination if he can see 
much of himself in a child. Oh, yes, a nose or the 
eyes or the color of the hair or something like that, 
but the world is full of snub noses and brown eyes. 
To us it never seemed much more than a coincidence. 
And if it were something more, what of it? How 
can a man work up any inspiring sentimental grati- 
fication over the fact that after he is gone his nose 
will persist in the world? The hope of immortality 
through offspring offers no solace to us. The joys of 
being an ancestor are exaggerated. 

Mind you, we do not mean for a moment to cry 
down the undeniable pleasure which arises from the 
privilege of being associated with a child of more 
than two years of age. For a person in rugged health 
who is not particularly dressed up and does not want 
to write a letter or read the newspaper, we can imag- 
ine few diversions more enjoyable than to have a 
child turned loose upon him. His own, if you wish, 
but only in the sense that it is the one to which he has 
become accustomed. The sense of paternity has 
nothing on earth to do with the fun. Only a person 
extraordinarily satisfied with himself can derive 
pleasure if this child in his house is a little person 

27 



PIECES OF HATE 

who gives him back nothing but a reflection. You 
want a new story and not the old one, which wasn't 
particularly satisfactory in the first place. We want 
Heywood Broun, 3rd, to start from scratch with- 
out having to lug along anything we have left 
him. As a matter of fact, we like him just as well as 
if he were no relation at all, because he seeems to be 
a person quite different from what we might have 
expected. When he says he doesn't want to take a 
bath we feel abashed and wish we had been a cleaner 
child, but for the most part we find him leading his 
own life altogether. When he bends over the Victrola 
and plays the Siegfried Funeral March over and over 
again we have no feeling of guilt. We know we can't 
be blamed for that. He never got it from us. 

And again, he is a person utterly strange, and 
therefore twice as interesting, when we find him 
standing up to people, us for instance, and saying 
that he won't do this or that because he doesn't want 
to. Much sharper than a serpent's tooth is the pleas- 
ure of an abject parent who finds himself the father 
of a stubborn child. If the people from the hospital 
should suddenly call up to-morrow and say, "We 
find we've made a mistake. We sent the wrong child 
to you three years ago, but now we can exchange him 
and rectify everything," we would say, "No, this 
one's been around quite a while now and is giving 
approximate satisfaction, and if you don't mind you 
can keep the real one." 

Plays and novels which picture meetings between 
fathers and sons parted from birth or before have 
always seemed singularly unconvincing to us. The 

28 



OWNERSHIP OF OFFSPRING 

old man says "My boy! My boy!" and weeps, and 
the young man looks him warmly in the eye and says, 
"There, there." Not a bit like it is our guess. If 
we had never seen H, 3rd, and had then met him at 
the end of twenty years, we wouldn't be particularly 
interested. Strangers always embarrass us. It would 
not even shock us much to find that they had sent him 
to Yale or that he brushed his hair straight back or 
wore spats. There are to us no ties at all just in being 
a father. A son is distinctly an acquired taste. It's 
the practice of parenthood that makes you feel that, 
after all, there may be something in it. And any- 
body's child will do for practice. 



29 



IV 

Cr. JV. (-«» 

The ship news man said that Gilbert K. Chesterton 
was staying at the Commodore and the telephone girl 
said he wasn't, but we'd trust even a ship news man 
before a hotel central and so we persisted. 

In fact, we almost persuaded her. 

"Maybe he's connected with one of the automobile 
companies that are exhibiting here," she suggested, 
helpfully. For a moment we wondered if by any 
chance the hotel authorities had made an error and 
placed him in the lobby with the ten-ton trucks. It 
seemed too fantastic. 

"He's not with any automobile company," we 
said severely. "Didn't you ever hear of 'The Man 
Who Was Thursday'?" 

"He may have been here Thursday, but he's not 
registered now," she answered with some assurance. 
We didn't seem to be getting on. "It's a book," we 
shouted. "He wrote it." 

"Not in this hotel," said central with an air of 
finality and rang off before we could try her out on 
"Man Alive" or "The Ball and the Cross." Still, it 
turned out eventually that she was right for it was 
the Biltmore which at last acknowledged Mr. Chester- 

30 



G. K. C. 

ton somewhat reluctantly after we had spelled out the 
name. 

"Not in his room, but somewhere about the hotel," 
was the message. 

"You can find him," said the city editor with con- 
fidence. "Just take this picture with you. He's sort 
of fat and he speaks with an English accent." 

We had a more helpful description than that in 
our mind, because we remembered Chesterton's an- 
swer when a sweet girl admirer once remarked, "It 
must be wonderful to walk .along the streets when 
everybody knows who you are." 

"Yes," said Chesterton; "and if they don't know 
they ask." 

He wasn't in the bar, but we found him in the 
smoking room. He was giving somebody an inter- 
view without much enthusiasm. It seemed to be the 
last round. Chesterton was beginning to droop. 
Every paradox, we feared, had beeen hammered out 
of him. He rose a little wearily and started for the 
elevator. We chased him. At last we had the satis- 
faction of finding some one we could outrun. He 
paused, and now we know the look which the Wed- 
ding Guest must have given to the Ancient Mariner. 

"It's for the New York Tribune/ 9 we said." 

"How about next week?" suggested Mr. Chesterton. 

"It's a daily newspaper," we remonstrated. "You 
know — Grantland Rice and The Conning Tower and 
When a Feller Needs a Friend." 

Something in the title of the Briggs series must 
have touched him. "To-morrow, perhaps," he an- 
swered. Feeling that the mountain was about to come 

31 



PIECES OF HATE 

through we stood our ground like another Mahomet. 
Better than that we rose to one of the few superb 
moments in our life. Looking at Mr. Chesterton 
coldly we said slowly, "It must be now or never." 
And we used a gesture. The nature of it escapes us, 
but it was something appropriate. Later we won- 
dered just what reply would have been possible if he 
had answered, "Never." After the danger had 
passed we realized that we had been holding up the 
visitor with an empty gun. It must have been our 
manner which awed him and he stopped walking and 
almost turned around. 

"The press men have been here since two o'clock," 
he complained more in sorrow than in anger. "What 
is it you want to know?" 

At that stage of the interview the advantage passed 
to him. The whole world lay before us. Dimly we 
could hear the problems of a great and unhappy uni- 
verse flapping in our ears and urging us with unin- 
telligible, hoarse caws to present their cases for solu- 
tion. And still we stood there unable to think of a 
single thing which we wanted to know. 

Mostly we had read Chesterton on rum and relig- 
ion, but there were too many people passing to give 
the proper atmosphere for any such confidential 
questions. Moreover, if he should question us in turn 
we realized that we would be unable to give him any 
information as to when to boil and when to skim, nor 
did we feel sufficiently well disposed to let him in on 
the name of the drug store where you say "I'm a 
patient of Dr. Brown's" and are forthwith allowed to 
buy gin. 

32 



G. K. C. 

All the questions we had ever asked anybody in 
our life passed rapidly before us. "What do you 
think of our tall buildings?" "Have you ever thought 
of playing Hamlet?" "Why are you called the 
woman with the most beautiful legs in Paris?" We 
remembered that the last had seemed silly even when 
we first used it on Mistinguett. On second thought 
we had told the interpreter to let it drop because the 
photographers were anxious to begin. There seemed 
to be even less sense to it now. Indeed none of our 
familiar inquiries struck us as appropriate. 

"What American authors do you read?" we ven- 
tured timidly, and added "living ones" hoping to get 
something about "Main Street" for Wednesday's book 
column. 

"I don't read any," he answered. 

That seemed to us a possible handicap in pursuing 
that line of inquiry. 

"I don't read any living English authors, either," 
Mr. Chesterton added hastily, as if he feared that he 
had trod upon our patriotism. "Nothing but dead 
authors and detective stories." 

That we had expected. In the march up to the 
heights of fame there comes a spot close to the 
summit in which man reads "nothing but detective 
stories." It is the Antaean touch which distinguishes 
all Olympians. As you remember, Antaeus was the 
demigod who had to touch the earth every once and 
so often to preserve his immortality. Probably he 
did it by reading a good murder story. 

"Can you tell me what 'Mary Rose' is all about?" 
we suggested, still fumbling for a literary theme. 

33 



PIECES OF HATE 

"I haven't seen 'Mary Rose,' " said Mr. Chesterton, 
although he did go on to tell us that Barrje had done 
several excellent plays. Probably there was a long 
pause then while we tried to think up something pro- 
vocative about the Irish question. 

"If you really will excuse me, I must go to my 
room," he burst out. "The press men have been here 
ever since two o'clock." 

This, of course, is no land in which to stand be- 
tween a man and his room, where heaven knows 
what solace may await the distinguished visitor who 
has been spending two and a half hours with the 
press men. We stepped aside willingly enough. 
Still, we must confess a slight disappointment in 
Gilbert K. Chesterton. He's not as fat as we had 
heard. 



34 



ON BEING A GOD 

We have found a way to feel very close kin to the 
high gods. The notion that we too leaned out from 
the gold bar of heaven came to us suddenly as we 
sat in the right field bleachers of one of the big 
theaters which provide a combination bill of vaude- 
ville and motion pictures. The process of deification 
occurred during the vaudeville portion of the pro- 
gram. 

The stage was several miles away. We could see 
perfectly and hear nothing as it was said. Curious 
little, insect-like people moved about the stage aim- 
lessly. And yet there was every evidence that they 
took themselves seriously. You would be surprised 
if you watched ants conducting a performance and 
calling for light cues and such things. It would 
puzzle you to know why one particular ant took care 
to provide himself with a flood of red and another 
just as arbitrarily chose green. 

Still, these were not ants but potentially men and 
women. They had names — Kerrigan and Vane, the 
Kaufman Trio, Miss Minstrel Co. and many others. 
From where we sat they were insects. It seemed to 
us that it would be no trouble at all to flip the three 
strong men and the pony ballet into oblivion with one 

35 



PIECES OF HATE 

finger. The little finger would be the most suitable. 

And there were times when we wanted to do it. 
Only, the feeling that we were too new a god to im- 
pose a doom restrained us. No divine patience was 
in us, but we felt that if we could wait a while it might 
come. The agitated atoms annoyed us. The audac- 
ity of "pony ballet" was almost insufferable. Why, 
as in Gulliver's land, the biggest of the strong men 
towered above the smallest of the ballet girls by at 
least the thickness of a fingernail. And these per- 
forming ants were forever working to entertain. 
They ran on and off the stage without apparent reason 
and waved their antennae about furiously. Two of 
the ants would stand close together as if in conversa- 
tion, and every now and then one of them would hit 
the other brutally in the face. 

We did not know why and our sympathies went 
entirely to the one who was struck. It was difficult 
not to interfere. We rather think that some of the 
seemingly extraordinary judgments of the high gods 
between mortals must be explained on the ground of 
a somewhat similar imperfect knowledge. They too 
see us, but they cannot hear. Time is required for 
sound to reach Olympus. When we get into warfare 
they observe only the carnage and the turmoil. The 
preliminary explanations arrive several years after 
the peace treaties have been signed, and then they 
sound silly and entirely irrelevant. 

Accordingly, the high gods are rather loath to 
interfere in the wars of earth. They are too far 
removed to understand causes, and even trumpet-like 
shouts about national honor merely amble up to their 

36 



ON BEING A GOD 

ears through long lanes of retarding ether. Indeed, 
the period of transit is so long that national honor 
invariably arrives at Olympus in poor condition. 
Only when strictly fresh is it in the least in- 
spiring. Little old last century's national honor is 
quite unpalatable. It is food neither for gods nor 
men. 

It was just as well that we waited before taking 
blind vengeance on the vaudeville insects, because 
half an hour or so after the blows were struck by the 
seemingly aggressive ant the conversation which pre- 
ceded the violence began to drift back to us. It came 
to our ears during the turn of the strong men and 
created a rather uncanny effect. At first we were 
puzzled because we had never known strong men to 
exchange any words at all except the traditional 
"alleyup." Almost immediately we realized that it 
was merely the tardiness of sound waves which 
caused the delay of the dialogue in reaching us in 
our bleacher seat. 

Fortunately, in spite of our illusion of omnipo- 
tence, the distance from the stage was not truly 
Olympian. The jokes came in time to be appre- 
ciated. It seems that one of the ants, whom we shall 
immediately christen A, told his friend and compan- 
ion, B for convenience, that he was taking two ladies 
to dinner and that he would like to have B in the 
party, but that he, A, did not have sufficient funds to 
defray any expense which he might incur. B admit- 
ted promptly that he himself had nothing. Accord- 
ingly, A suggested a scheme for sociability's sake. 
He urged B to come, but impressed upon him that 

37 



PIECES OF HATE 

when asked as to what he wished to eat or drink he 
should reply, "I don't care for anything." 

In order to guard against a slip-up the friendly 
ants rehearsed the scene in advance. It ran some- 
thing like this: 

A — August! August! 

B — You're a little wrong on your months. This is 
January. 

A (punching him) — You fool! August is the name 
of the waiter. 

The delay which retarded the progress of this joke 
to our ears impaired its effectiveness a little. The 
rest was more sprightly. 

A — August, bring some chicken en casserole and 
combination salad for myself and the two ladies. Oh, 
I've forgotten my friend. What will you have? 

B — Bring me some pigs' knuckles. 

At this point A hit B for the second time and again 
called him a fool. 

A — Why did you say, "Bring me some pigs' 
knuckles?" 

B — Why did you ask me so pretty? 

Thereupon they rehearsed the situation again. 

A — Oh, I've forgotten my friend. Won't you have 
something? You must join us. 

B — Sure, bring me a dish of ham and eggs. 

Again blows were struck and again A inquired 
ferociously as to the cause of the slip-up. 

A — What made you say, "Bring me a dish of ham 
and eggs?" 

B — Well, why did you go and coax me? 

Earlier in the evening we had observed that other 

38 



ON BEING A GOD 

blows were struck and there must have been further 
dialogue to go with them, but we could not wait for it 
to arrive. We rather hoped that the jokes would 
follow us home, but they must have become lost on 
the way. 

Perhaps you don't think there was much sense to 
this talk anyway. 

Maybe the real gods on high Olympus feel the 
same way about us when our words limp home. 



39 



VI 

CHIVALRY IS BORN 

Every now and then we hear parents commenting 
on the fearful things which motion pictures may do 
to the minds of children. They seem to think that a 
little child is full of sweetness and of light. We had 
the same notion until we had a chance to listen in- 
tently to the prattle of a three-year-old. Now we 
know that no picture can possibly outdo him in his 
own fictionized frightfulness. 

Of course, we had heard testimony to this effect 
from Freudians, but we had supposed that all these 
horrible blood lusts and such like were suppressed. 
Unfortunately, our own son is without reticence. 
We have a notion that each individual goes through 
approximately the same stages of progress as the 
race. Heywood Broun, 3d, seemed not yet quite as 
high as the cavemen in his concepts. For the last 
few months he has been harping continuously, and 
chiefly during meal times, about cutting off people's 
noses and gouging out eyes. In his range of specu- 
lative depredations he has invariably seemed liberal. 

There seemed to us, then, no reason to fear that 
new notions of horror would come to Heywood Broun, 
3d, from any of the pictures being licensed at present 
in this State. As a matter of fact, he has received 

40 



CHIVALRY IS BORN 

from the films his first notions of chivalry. Of 
course, we are not at all sure that this is beneficial. 
We like his sentimentalism a little worse than his 
sadism. 

After seeing "Tol'able David," for instance, we 
had a long argument. Since our experience with 
motion pictures is longer than his we often feel 
reasonably certain that our interpretation of the hap- 
penings is correct and we do not hesitate to contra- 
dict H. 3d, although he is so positive that sometimes 
our confidence is shaken. We knew that he was all 
wrong about "Tol'able David" because it was quite 
evident that he had become mixed in his mind con- 
cerning the hero and the villain. He kept insisting 
that David was a bad man because he fought. Paci- 
fism has always seemed to us an appealing 
philosophy, but it came with bad grace from 
such a swashbuckling disciple of frightfulness as 
H. 3d. 

However, we did not develop that line of reasoning 
but contended that David had to fight in order to 
protect himself. Woodie considered this for a while 
and then answered triumphantly, "David hit a 
woman." 

Our disgust was unbounded. Film life had seared 
the child after all. Actually, it was not David who 
hit the woman but the villainous Luke Hatburn, the 
terrible mountaineer. That error in observation was 
not the cause of our worry. The thing that bothered 
us was that here was a young individual, not yet four 
years of age, who was already beginning to talk in 
terms of "the weaker vessel" and all the other phrases 

41 



PIECES OF HATE 

of a romantic school we believed to be dying. It 
could not have shocked us more if he had said, 
"Woman's place is in the home." 

"David hit a woman," he piped again, seeming to 
sense our consternation. "What of # it?" we cried, but 
there was no bullying him out of his point of view. 
The fault belongs entirely to the motion pictures. 
H. 3d cannot truthfully say that he has had the slight- 
est hint from us as to any sex inferiority of women. 
By word and deed we have tried to set him quite the 
opposite example. We have never allowed him to 
detect us for an instant in any chivalrous act or piece 
of partial sex politeness. Toasts such as "The ladies, 
God bless 'em" are not drunk in our house, nor has 
Woodie ever heard "Shall we join the ladies," "the 
fair sex," "the weaker sex," or any other piece of 
patronizing masculine poppycock. Susan B. An- 
thony's picture hangs in his bedroom side by side 
with Abraham Lincoln and the big elephant. He has 
led a sheltered life and has never been allowed to 
play with nice children. 

But, somehow or other, chivalry and romanticism 
creep into each life even through barred windows. 
We have no intention of being too hard upon the 
motion pictures. Something else would have intro- 
duced it. These phases belong in the development 
of the race. H. 3d must serve his time as gentle 
knight just as he did his stint in the role of sadistic 
caveman. Presently, we fear, he will get to the 
crusades and we shall suffer during a period in which 
he will try to improve our manners. History will 
then be our only consolation. We shall try to bear 

42 



CHIVALRY IS BORN 

up secure in the knowledge that the dark ages are still 
ahead of him. 

We hoped that the motion pictures might be used 
as an antidote against the damage which they had 
done. We took H. 3d to see Nazimova in "A Doll's 
House.' 9 There was a chance, we thought, that he 
might be moved by the eloquent presentation of the 
fact that before all else a woman is a human being 
and just as eligible to be hit as anybody else. We 
read him the caption embodying Nora's defiance, but 
at the moment it flashed upon the screen he had 
crawled under his seat to pick up an old program 
and the words seemed to have no effect. Indeed when 
Nora went out into the night, slamming the door 
behind her, he merely hazarded that she was "going 
to Mr. Butler's." Mr. Butler happens to be our 
grocer. 

The misapprehension was not the fault of Nazi- 
mova. She flung herself out of the house magnifi- 
cently, but Heywood Broun, 3d, insisted on believing 
that she had gone around the corner for a dozen eggs. 

In discussing the picture later, we found that he 
had quite missed the point of Mr. Ibsen's play. Of 
Nora, the human being, he remembered nothing. It 
was only Nora, the mother, who had impressed him. 
All he could tell us about the great and stimulating 
play was that the lady had crawled on the floor with 
her little boy and her little girl. And yet it seems 
to us that Ibsen has told his story with singular 
clarity. 

D'Artagnan Woodie likes very much. He is fond 
of recalling to our mind the fact that D'Artagnan 

43 



PIECES OF HATE 

"walked on the roof in his nightshirt." H. 3d is not 
allowed on the roof nor is he permitted to wander 
about in his nightshirt. 

Perhaps the child's introduction to the films has 
been somewhat too haphazard. As we remember, 
the first picture which we saw together was called 
"Is Life Worth Living?" The worst of it is that cir- 
cumstances made it necessary for us to leave before 
the end and so neither of us found out the answer. 



44 



VII 

RUTH VS. ROTH 

We picked up "Who's Who in America" yesterday 
to get some vital statistics about Babe Ruth, and 
found to our surprise that he was not in the book. 
Even as George Herman Ruth there is no mention of 
him. The nearest name we could find was: "Roth, 
Filibert, forestry expert; b. Wurttemberg, Germany, 
April 20, 1858; s. Paul Raphael and Amalie (Volz) 
R., early edn. in Wurttemberg " 

There is in our heart not an atom of malice against 
Prof. Roth (since September, 1903, he has been 
"prof, forestry, U. Mich."), and yet we question the 
justice of his admission to a list of national celebrities 
while Ruth stands without. We know, of course, 
that Prof. Roth is the author of "Forest Conditions in 
Wisconsin" and of "The Uses of Wood," but we 
wonder whether he has been able to describe in words 
uses of wood more sensational and vital than those 
which Ruth has shown in deeds. Hereby we chal- 
lenge the editor of "Who's Who in America" to 
debate the affirmative side of the question: Resolved, 
That Prof. Roth's volume called "Timber Physics" 
has exerted a more profound influence in the life of 
America than Babe Ruth's 1921 home-run record. 

The question is, of course, merely a continuation 

45 



PIECES OF HATE 

of the ancient controversy as to the relative impor- 
tance of the theorist and the practitioner; should his- 
tory prefer in honor the man who first developed the 
hypothesis that the world was round or the other who 
went out and circumnavigated it? What do we owe 
to Ben Franklin and what to the lightning? Shall we 
celebrate Newton or the apple? 

Personally, our sympathies go out to the performer 
rather than the fellow in the study or the laboratory. 
Many scientists staked their reputations on the fact 
that the world was round before Magellan set sail in 
the Vittoria. He did not lack written assurances that 
there was no truth in the old tale of a flat earth with 
dragons and monsters lurking just beyond the edges. 

But suppose, in spite of all this, Magellan had 
gone on sailing, sailing until his ship did topple over 
into the void of dragons and big snakes. The pro- 
fessors would have been abashed. Undoubtedly they 
would have tried to laugh the misfortune off, and 
they might even have been good enough sports to say, 
"That's a fine joke on us." But at worst they could 
lose nothing but their reputations, which can be made 
over again. Magellan would not live to profit by his 
experience. Being one of those foreigners, he had 
no sense of humor, and if the dragons bit him as he 
fell, it is ten to one he could not even manage to 
smile. 

By this time we have rather traveled away from 
Roth's "Timber Physics" and Ruth's home-run rec- 
ord, but we hope that you get what we mean. With- 
out knowing the exact nature of "Timber Physics," 
we assume that the professor discusses the most effi- 

46 



RUTH VS. ROTH 

cient manner in which to bring about the greatest 
possible impact between any wooden substance and 
a given object. But mind you, he merely discusses it. 
If the professor chances to be wrong, even if he is 
wrong three times, nobody in the classroom is likely 
to poke a sudden finger high in the air and shout, 
"You're out!" 

The professor remains at bat during good beha- 
vior. He is not subject to any such sudden vicissi- 
tudes as Ruth. Moreover, timber physics is to Mr. 
Roth a matter of cool and calm deliberation. No 
adversary seeks to fool him with speed or spitballs. 
"Hit it out" never rings in his ears. And after all, 
just what difference does it make if Mr. Roth errs in 
his timber physics? It merely means that a certain 
number of students leave Michigan knowing a little 
less than they should — and nobody expects anything 
else from students. 

On the other hand, a miscalculation by Ruth in 
the uses of wood affects much more important mat- 
ters. A strike-out on his part may bring about 
complete tragedy and the direst misfortune. There 
have been occasions, and we fear that there will still 
be occasions, when Ruth's bat will be the only thing 
which stands between us and the loss of the American 
League pennant. In times like these who cares about 
"Forest Conditions in Wisconsin"? 

Coming to the final summing up for our side of 
the question at debate, we shall try to lift the whole 
affair above any mere Ruth versus Roth issue. It 
will be our endeavor to show that not only has Babe 
Ruth been a profound interest and influence in Amer- 

47 



PIECES OF HATE 

ica, but that on the whole he has been a power for 
progress. Ruth has helped to make life a little more 
gallant. He has set before us an example of a man 
who tries each minute for all or nothing. When he 
is not knocking home runs he is generally striking 
out, and isn't there more glory in fanning in an effort 
to put the ball over the fence than in prolonging a 
little life by playing safe? 



48 



VIII 

THE BIGGER THE YEAR 

As soon as we heard that "The Big Year — A Col- 
lege Story" by Meade Minnigerode was about Yale 
we knew that we just had to read it. Tales of travel 
and curious native customs have always fascinated 
us. According to Mr. Minnigerode the men of Yale 
walk about their campus in big blue sweaters with 
"Y's" on them, smoking pipes and singing college 
songs under the windows of one another. The 
seniors, he informs us, come out on summer after- 
noons on roller skates. 

Of course, we are disposed to believe that Mr. 
Minnigerode, like all travelers in strange lands, is 
prone to color things a little more highly than exact 
accuracy would sanction. We felt this particularly 
when he began to write about Yale football. There 
was, for instance, Curly Corliss, the captain of the 
eleven, who is described as "starting off after a punt 
to tear back through a broken? field, thirty and forty 
yards at a clip, tackling an opposing back with a 
deadliness which was final — never hurt, always 
smiling — a blond head of curly hair (he never wore 
a headguard) flashing in and out across the field, the 
hands clapping together, the plaintive voice calling 
'All right, all right, give me the ball!' when a game 

49 



PIECES OF HATE 

was going badly, and then carrying it alone to touch- 
down after touchdown." 

Although we have seen all of Yale's recent big 
games we recognized none of that except "the plain- 
tive voice" and even that would have been more 
familiar if it had been used to say "Moral victory!" 
We waited to find Mr. Minnigerode explaining that 
of course he was referring to the annual contest with 
the Springfield Training School, but he did no such 
thing and went straight ahead with the pretense that 
football at Yale is romantic. To be sure, he attempts 
to justify this attitude by letting us see a good deal 
of the gridiron doings through the eyes of a bull 
terrier who could not well be expected to be cap- 
tious. Champ, named after the Yale chess team, 
came by accident to the field just as Curly Corliss 
was off on one of his long runs. Yes, it was a game 
against the scrubs. "Some one came tearing along 
and lunged at Curly as he went by, apparently trying 
to grab him about the legs. Champ cast all caution 
to the winds. Interfere with Curly, would he? Well, 
Champ guessed not! Like an arrow from a bow 
Champ hurled himself through the air and fastened 
his jaws firmly in the seat of the offender's pants, in 
a desperate effort to prevent him from further molest- 
ing Curly." 

Champ was immediately adopted by the team as 
mascot. It seems to us he deserved more, for this 
was the first decent piece of interference seen on Yale 
field in years. The associate mascot was Jimmy, a 
little newsboy, who also took football at New Haven 
seriously. His romanticism, like that of Champ, was 

50 



THE BIGGER THE YEAR 

understandable. Hadn't Curly Corliss once saved 
his life? We need not tell you that he had. "Jimmy," 
as Mr. Minnigerode tells the story, "started to run 
across the street, without noticing the street-car lum- 
bering around the corner . . . and then before he 
knew it Jimmy tripped and fell, and the car was 
almost on top of him grinding its brakes. Jimmy 
never knew exactly what happened in the next few 
seconds, but he heard people shouting, and then 
something struck him and he was dragged violently 
away by the seat of the pants. When he could think 
connectedly again he was sitting on the curb consid- 
erably battered — and Curly was sitting beside him, 
with his trousers torn, nursing a badly cut hand." 

We remember there was an incident like that in 
Cambridge once, only the man who rescued the news- 
boy was not the football captain but. a substitute on 
the second team. We have forgotten his name. 
Unlike Corliss of Yale, the Harvard man did not 
bother to pick up the newsboy. Instead he seized the 
street car and threw it for a loss. 

The first half was over and Princeton led by a 
score of 10 to 0. Things looked blue for Yale. 
Neither mascot was on hand. Yale was trying to win 
with nothing but students. Where was little Jimmy 
the newsboy? If you must know he was in the 
hospital, for he had been run over again. The boy 
could not seem to break himself of the habit. Un- 
fortunately he had picked out the afternoon of the 
Princeton game when all the Yale players were much 
too busy trying to stop Tigers to have any time to 

51 



PIECES OF HATE 

interfere with traffic. It was only an automobile this 
time and Jimmy escaped with a mere gash over one 
eye. Champ, the bull terrier who caused the mixup, 
was uninjured. "I'm all right now," Jimmy told 
the doctor, "honest I am — can I go — I gotta take 
Champ out to the game — he's the mascot and they 
can't win without him — please, Mister, let me go — I 
guess they need us bad out there." 

Apparently the crying need of Yale football is not 
so much a coaching system as a good leash to keep 
the mascots from getting run over. Champ and 
Jimmy rushed into the locker room just as the big 
Blue team was about to trot out for the second half. 
After that there was nothing to it. Yale won by a 
score of 12 to 10. "Curly clapped his hands to- 
gether," writes Mr. Minnegerode in describing the 
rally, "and kept calling out 'Never mind the signal! 
Give me the ball' in his plaintive voice" 

This sounds more like Yale football than anything 
else in the book. However, it sufficed. Curly made 
two touchdowns and all the Yale men went to Mory's 
and sang "Curly Corliss, Curly Corliss, he will leave 
old Harvard scoreless." It is said that a legend is 
now gaining ground in New Haven that Yale will not 
defeat Harvard again until it is led by some other 
captain whose name rhymes with "scoreless." The 
current captain of the Elis is named Jordan. The 
only thing that rhymes with is "scored on." 

Still, as Professor Billy Phelps has taught his stu- 
dents to say, football isn't everything. Perhaps 
something of Sparta has gone from Yale, for a few 
years or forever, but just look at the Yale poets and 

52 



THE BIGGER THE YEAR 

novelists all over the place. There is a new kindli- 
ness at New Haven. Take for instance the testimony 
of the same "Big Year" when it describes a touching 
little scene between Curly Corliss, the captain of the 
Yale football team, and his room mate as they are 
revealed in the act of retiring for the night: 

" 'Angel!' 

" 'Yeah,' very sleepily. 

" 'They all seem to get over it!' 

"'Over what?' 

" 'The follows who have graduated,' Curly ex- 
plained. T guess they all feel pretty poor when 
they leave, but they get over it right away. It's just 
like changing into a new suit, I expect.' 

" 'Yeah, I guess so' . . . 

" 'Well, goo' night, little feller' . . . 

" 'Goo' night, Teddy.' " 

But we do wish Mr. Minnegerode had been a little 
more explicit and had told us who tucked them in. 



53 



IX 

FOR OLD NASSAU 

Wadsworth Camp, we find, has done almost as much 
for Princeton in his novel, "The Guarded Heights," 
as Meade Minnigerode has accomplished for Yale in 
"The Big Year." 

George Morton might never have gone to any col- 
lege if it had not been for Sylvia Planter. He was 
enamored of her from the very beginning when old 
Planter engaged him to accompany his daughter on 
rides, but his admiration did not become articulate 
until she fell off her horse. She seems to have done 
it extremely well. "He saw her horse refuse," writes 
Mr. Camp, "straightening his knees and sliding in 
the marshy ground. He watched Sylvia, with an ease 
and grace nearly unbelievable, somersault across the 
hedge and out of sight in the meadow beyond." 

It seemed to us that the horse should have received 
some of the credit for the ease with which Sylvia 
shot across the hedge, but young Morton was much 
too intent upon the fate of his goddess to have eyes 
for anything else. When he found her lying on the 
ground she was unconscious, and so he told her of 
his love. That brought her to and she called him 
"You — you — stable boy." And so George decided 
to go to college. 

54 



FOR OLD NASSAU 

His high school preparation had been scant and 
irregular. He went to Princeton, and after two 
months' cramming passed all his examinations. Foot- 
ball attracted him from the first as a means to the 
advancement which he desired. "With surprised 
eyes," writes our author, "he saw estates as extrava- 
gant as Oakmont, and frequently in better taste. Lit- 
tle by little he picked up the names of the families 
that owned them. He told himself that some day he 
would «enter those places as a guest, bowed to by such 
servants as he had been. It was possible, he prom- 
ised himself bravely, if only he could win a Yale or 
a Harvard game." 

Perhaps this explains why one meets so few Prince- 
ton men socially. Some, we have found, are occa- 
sionally invited to drop in after dinner. These, we 
assume, are recruited from the ranks of those Prince- 
tonians who have tied Yale or Harvard or at least 
held the score down. 

Like Mr. Minnigerode, Mr. Camp employs sym- 
bolism in his story. In the Yale novel we had Cor- 
liss evidently standing for Coy. Just which Prince- 
ton hero George Morton represents we are not pre- 
pared to say. In fact, the only Princeton name which 
comes to mind at the moment is that of Big Bill Ed- 
wards who used to sit in the Customs House and 
throw them all for a loss. Morton can hardly be 
intended for Edwards because it seems unlikely that 
anybody would ever have engaged Big Bill to ride 
horses; no, not even to break them, A little further 
on, however, we are introduced to the Princeton 
coach, a certain Mr. Stringham. Here, to be sure, 

55 



PIECES OF HATE 

identification is easy. Stringham, we haven't a doubt, 
is Roper. We could wish Mr. Camp had been more 
subtle. He might, for instance, have called him Cor- 
dier. 

In some respects Morton proved an even better foot- 
ball player than Corliss. He did not score any greater 
number of touchdowns, but he had more of an air 
with him. Thus, in the account of the Harvard game 
it is recorded: "Then, with his interference blocked 
and tumbling, George yielded to his old habit and 
slipped off to one side at a hazard. The enemy's 
secondary defense had been drawing in, there was no 
one near enough to stop him within those ten yards 
and he went over for a touchdown and casually 
kicked the goal." 

Eventually, George Morton did get asked to all 
the better houses, but still Sylvia spurned him. "Go 
away and don't bother me," was the usual form of 
her replies to his ardent words of wooing. Naturally 
he knew that he had her on the run. A man who 
had taken more than one straight arm squarely in 
the face during the course of his football career was 
not to be rebuffed by a slip of a girl. 

The war delayed matters for a time, and George 
went and was good at that too. He was a major be- 
fore he left Plattsburgh. For a time we feared that 
he was in danger of becoming a snob, but the great 
democratizing forces of the conflict carried him into 
the current. One of the most thrilling chapters in 
the book tells how he exposed his life under very 
heavy fire to go forward and rescue an American 
who turned out to be a Yale man. 

56 



FOR OLD NASSAU 

There was no stopping George Morton. In the 
end he wore Sylvia down. Nothing else could be 
expected from such a man. German machine guns 
and heavy artillery had failed to stop him and he 
had even hit the Harvard line, upon occasion, with- 
out losing a yard. 

His head was hard and he could not take a hint. 
In the end Sylvia just had to marry him. Her right 
hand swing was not good enough. "As in a dream he 
went to her, and her curved lips moved beneath his, 
but he pressed them closer so that she couldn't speak; 
for he felt encircling them in a breathless embrace, 
as his arms held her, something thrilling and rudi- 
mentary that neither of them had experienced be- 
fore " 

And as we read the further details of the love scene 
it seemed to us that George Morton had made a most 
fortunate choice when he decided to go to Princeton. 
His football experience stood him in good stead in 
his love-making, for he had been trained with an 
eleven which tackled around the neck. 



57 



X 

MR. DEMPSEY'S FIVE-FOOT SHELF 

It is hardly fair to expect Jack Dempsey to take 
literature very seriously. How, for instance, can he 
afford to pay much attention to George Bernard Shaw 
who declared just before the fight that Carpentier 
could not lose and ought to be quoted at odds of fifty 
to one? From the point of view of Dempsey, then, 
creative evolution, the superman and all the rest, are 
the merest moonshine. He might well take the posi- 
tion that since Mr. Shaw was so palpably wrong 
about the outcome of the fight two days before it 
happened, it scarcely behooves anybody to pay much 
attention to his predictions as to the fate of the world 
and mankind two thousand years hence. 

Whatever the reason, Jack Dempsey does not read 
George Bernard Shaw much. But he has heard of 
him. When some reporter came to Dempsey a day 
or so before the fight and told him that Shaw had 
fixed fifty to one as the proper odds on Carpentier, 
the champion made no comment. The newspaper 
gossiper, disappointed of his sensation, asked if 
Dempsey had ever heard of Shaw and the fighter 
stoutly maintained that he had. The examination 
went no further but it is fair to assume that Dempsey 
did know the great British sporting writer. It was 

58 



DEMPSEY'S FIVE-FOOT SHELF 

not remarkable that he paid no attention to his pre- 
diction. Dempsey would not even be moved much 
by a prediction from Hughie Fullerton. 

In other words literature and life are things 
divorced in Dempsey's mind. He does read. The 
first time we ever saw Dempsey he discussed books 
with not a little interest. He was not at his training 
quarters when we arrived but his press agent showed 
us about — a singularly reverential man this press 
agent. "This," he said, and he seemed to lower his 
voice, "is the bed where Jack Dempsey sleeps." All 
the Louises knew better beds and so did Lafayette 
even when a stranger in a strange land. Washington 
himself fared better in the midst of war. Nor can it 
be said that there was anything very compelling 
about the room in which Dempsey slept. It had air 
but not much distinction. There were just two pic- 
tures on the wall. One represented a heavy surf 
upon an indeterminate but rather rockbound coast 
and the other showed a lady asleep with cupids 
hovering about her bed. Although the thought is 
erotic the artist had removed all that in the execution. 

Much more striking was the fact that upon a chair 
beside the bed of Dempsey lay a couple of books and 
a magazine. It was not The Bookman but Photo 
Play. The books were "The Czar's Spy" by William 
Le Queux, "The Spoilers" by Rex Beach, and at 
least one other Western novel which we have unfor- 
tunately forgotten. It was, as we remember it, the 
Luck of the Lazy Something or Other. The press 
agent said that Jack read quite a little and pointed to 
the reading light which had been strung over his bed. 

59 



PIECES OF HATE 

He then went on to show us the clothes closet and the 
bureau of the champion to prove that he was no slave 
to fashion. We can testify that only one pair of 
shoes in the room had gray suede tops. Then we saw 
the kitchen and were done. 

There had been awe in the tones of the conductor 
from the beginning. "Jack's going to have roast 
lamb for dinner to-night," he announced in an awful 
hush. Even as we went out he could not resist low- 
ering his voice a little as he said, "This is the hat 
rack. This is where the champion puts his hat." 
We had gone only fifty yards away from the house 
when a big brown limousine drew up. "That," said 
the press agent, and this time we feared he was going 
to die, "is Jack Dempsey himself." 

The preparation had been so similar to the first 
act of "Enter Madame" that we expected tempera- 
ment and gesture from the star. He put us wholly at 
ease by being much more frightened than any one 
in the visiting party. As somebody has said some- 
where, "Any mouse can make this elephant squeal." 
Jack Dempsey is decidedly a timid man and we found 
later that he was a gentle one. He answered, "Yes, 
sir," and "No, sir," at first. If we had his back and 
shoulders we'd have a civil word for no man. By 
and by he grew a little more at ease and somebody 
asked him what he read. He was not particularly 
strong on the names of books and he always forgot 
the author, which detracts somewhat from this article 
as a guide for readers. There were almost three 
hundred books at his disposal, since his training 
quarters had once been an aviation camp. These 

60 



DEMPSEY'S FIVE-FOOT SHELF 

were the books of the fliers. Practically all the popu- 
lar novelists and short story writers were represented. 
We remember seeing several titles by Mary Roberts 
Rinehart, Irvin Cobb, Zane Grey, Rupert Hughes, 
and Rex Beach. Older books were scarce. The only 
one we noticed was "A Tale of Two Cities." This 
Dempsey had not read. Perhaps Jack Kearns ad- 
vised against it on account of the possible disturbing 
psychological effects of the chapter with all the 
counting. 

Dempsey said he had devoted most of his time to 
Western novels. When questioned he admitted that 
he did not altogether surrender himself to them. "I 
was a cowboy once for a while," he said. "There's 
a lot of hokum in those books." But when pressed as 
to what he really liked his face did light up and he 
even remembered the name of the book. "There 
was one book I've been reading," he burst out; "it's 
a fine book. It's called 'The Czar's Spy.' " 

"Perhaps," suggested Ruth Hale of the visiting 
party, "a grand duke would say there was a lot of 
hokum in that." 

Dempsey was not to be deterred by any such higher 
criticism. Never having been a grand duke, he did 
not worry about the accuracy of the story. It was in 
a field far apart from life. That we gathered was 
his idea of the proper field for fiction. In life Demp- 
sey is a stern realist. It is only in reading that he is 
romantic. A more impressionable man would have 
been disturbed by the air of secrecy which sur- 
rounded the camp of Carpentier. That never worried 
Dempsey. He prepared himself and never thought 

61 



PIECES OF HATE 

up contingencies. He did not even like to talk fight. 
None of us drew him out much about boxing. Some- 
body told him that Jim Corbett had reported that 
when he first met Carpentier he had been vastly 
tempted to make a feint at the Frenchman to see 
whether or not he would fall into a proper attitude of 
defense. 

"Yes," giggled Dempsey, "and it would have been 
funny if Carp had busted him one on the chin." 
This seemed to him an extraordinary humorous con- 
ceit and he kept chuckling over it every now and then. 
While he was in this good humor somebody sounded 
him out as to what he would do if he lost; or rather 
the comment was made that an old time fighter, once 
a champion, was now coming back to the ring and 
had declared that he was as good as he ever was. 

"Why shouldn't he?" said Dempsey just a little 
sharply. "Nobody wants to see a man that says he 
isn't as good as he used to be." 

"Would you say that?" he was asked. 

"Well," said Dempsey, and this time he reflected 
a little, "it would all depend on how I was fixed. If 
I needed the money I would. I'd use all the old 
alibis." 

We liked that frankness and we liked Dempsey 
again when somebody wanted to know how he could 
possibly say anything in the ring during the fight to 
"get the goat of Carpentier." "We ain't nearly well 
enough acquainted for that," said Dempsey and we 
gathered that he was of the opinion that you must 
know a man pretty well before you can insult him. 
The champion is not a man to whom one would look 

62 



DEMPSEY'S FIVE-FOOT SHELF 

for telling rejoinders, though he has needed them 
often enough in the last year and a half. Criticism 
has hurt him, for he is not insensitive. He is merely 
inarticulate. This must have been the reason which 
prompted some sporting writers to feel that he would 
come into the ring whipped and down from the fact 
that he had been able to make no reply to all the 
charges brought against him. It did not work out 
that way. Dempsey did have a means of expression 
and he used it. There is no logic in force and yet a 
man can exclaim "Is that so!" with his fists. Demp- 
sey said it. If we may be allowed to stretch a point 
it might even be hazarded that the champion's motto 
is "Say it with cauliflowers." 

As the Freudians have it, fighting is his "escape." 
Decidedly, he is a man with an inferiority complex. 
But for his boxing skill he would need literature 
badly. As it is, he does not need to read about hair- 
breadth escapes. He has them, such as in the second 
round of the fight on Boyle's Thirty Acres. 

In summing up, we can only add that as yet litera- 
ture has had no large effect upon the life of Jack 
Dempsey. 



63 



XI 

SPORT FOR ART'S SAKE 

For years we had been hearing about moral vic- 
tories and at last we saw one. This is not intended 
as an excuse for the fact that we said before the fight 
that Carpentier would beat Dempsey. We erred 
with Bernard Shaw. The surprising revelation which 
came to us on this July afternoon was that a thing 
may be done well enough to make victory entirely sec- 
ondary. We have all heard, of course, of sport for 
sport's sake but Georges Carpentier established a still 
more glamorous ideal. Sport for art's sake was what 
he showed us in the big wooden saucer over on 
Boyle's dirty acres. 

It was the finest tragic performance in the lives of 
ninety thousand persons. We hope that Professor 
George Pierce Baker sent his class in dramatic com- 
position. We will be disappointed if Eugene O'Neill, 
the white hope of the American drama, was not there. 
Here for once was a laboratory demonstration of life. 
None of the crowds in Greece who went to somewhat 
more beautiful stadiums in search of Euripides ever 
saw the spirit of tragedy more truly presented. And 
we will wager that Euripides was not able to lift his 
crowd up upon its hind legs into a concerted shout of 
"Medea! Medea! Medea!" as Carpentier moved 

64 



SPORT FOR ART'S SAKE 

the fight fans over in Jersey City in the second round. 
In fact it is our contention that the fight between 
Dempsey and Carpentier was the most inspiring spec- 
tacle which America has seen in a generation. 

Personally we would go further back than that. 
We would not accept a ticket for David and Goliath 
as a substitute. We remember that in that instance 
the little man won, but it was a spectacle less fine in 
artistry from the fact that it was less true to life. 
The tradition that Jack goes up the beanstalk and kills 
his giant, and that Little Red Ridinghood has the 
better of the wolf, and many other stories are limited 
in their inspirational quality by the fact that they 
are not true. They are stories that man has invented 
to console himself on winter's evenings for the fact 
that he is small and the universe is large. Carpentier 
showed us something far more thrilling. All of us 
who watched him know now that man cannot beat 
down fate, no matter how much his will may flame, 
but he can rock it back upon its heels when he puts 
all his heart and his shoulders into a blow. 

That is what happened in the second round. Car- 
pentier landed his straight right upon Dempsey's 
jaw and the champion, who was edging in toward 
him, shot back and then swayed forward. Dempsey's 
hands dropped to his side. He was an open target. 
Carpentier swung a terrific right hand uppercut and 
missed. Dempsey fell into a clinch and held on until 
his head cleared. He kept close to Carpentier during 
the rest of the fight and wore him down with body 
blows during the infighting. We know of course that 
when the first prehistoric creature crawled out of the 

65 



PIECES OF HATE 

ooze up to the beaches (see "The Outline of History" 
by H. G. Wells, some place in the first volume, just 
a couple of pages after that picture of the big lizard) 
it was already settled that Carpentier was going to 
miss that uppercut. And naturally it was inevitable 
that he should have the worst of it at infighting. Fate 
gets us all in the clinches, but Eugene O'Neill and all 
our young writers of tragedy make a great mistake 
if they think that the poignancy of the fate of man 
lies in the fact that he is weak, pitiful and helpless. 
The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he 
almost wins. Or, if you are intent on pointing out 
that his downfall is inevitable, that at least he com- 
pletes the gesture of being on the eve of victory. 

For just eleven seconds on the afternoon of July 2 
we felt that we were at the threshold of a miracle. 
There was such flash and power in the right hand 
thrust of Carpentier's that we believed Dempsey 
would go down, and that fate would go with him and 
all the plans laid out in the days of the oozy friends 
of Mr. Wells. No sooner were the men in the ring 
together than it seemed just as certain that Dempsey 
would win as that the sun would come up on the 
morning of July 3. By and by we were not so sure 
about the sun. It might be down, we thought, and 
also out. It was included in the scope of Carpentier's 
punch, we feared. No, we did not exactly fear it. 
We respect the regularity of the universe by which 
we live, but we do not love it. If the blow had been 
as devastating as we first believed, we should have 
counted the world well lost. 

Great circumstances produce great actors. History 

66 



SPORT FOR ART'S SAKE 

is largely concerned with arranging good entrances 
for people; and later exits not always quite so good. 
Carpentier played his part perfectly down to the last 
side. People who saw him just as he came before 
the crowd reported that he was pitifully nervous, 
drawn, haggard. It was the traditional and becoming 
nervousness of the actor just before a great perform- 
ance. It was gone the instant Carpentier came in 
sight of his ninety thousand. His head was back and 
his eyes and his smile flamed as he crawled through 
the ropes. And he gave some curious flick to his 
bathrobe as he turned to meet the applause. Until 
that very moment we had been for Dempsey, but 
suddenly we found ourself up on our feet making 
silly noises. We shouted "Carpentier! Carpentier! 
Carpentier!" and forgot even to be ashamed of our 
pronunciation. He held his hands up over his head 
and turned until the whole arena, including the five- 
dollar seats, had come within the scope of his smile. 

Dempsey came in a minute later and we could not 
cheer, although we liked him. It would have been 
like cheering for Niagara Falls at the moment some- 
body was about to go over in a barrel. Actually 
there is a difference of sixteen pounds between the 
two men, which is large enough, but it seemed that 
afternoon as if it might have been a hundred. And 
we knew for the first time that a man may smile and 
smile and be an underdog. 

We resented at once the law of gravity, the Mal- 
thusian theory and the fact that a straight line is the 
shortest distance between two points. Everything 
scientific, exact, and inevitable was distasteful. We 

67 



PIECES OF HATE 

wanted the man with the curves to win. It seemed 
impossible throughout the first round. Carpentier 
was first out of his corner and landed the first blow, a 
light but stinging left to the face. Then Dempsey 
closed in and even the people who paid only thirty 
dollars for their seats could hear the thump, thump 
of his short hooks as they beat upon the narrow 
stomach of Carpentier. The challenger was only too 
evidently tired when the round ended. 

Then came the second and, after a moment of 
fiddling about, he shot his right hand to the jaw. 
Carpentier did it again, a second time, and this was 
the blow perfected by a life time of training. The 
time was perfect, the aim was perfect, every ounce 
of strength was in it. It was the blow which had 
downed Bombardier Wells, and Joe Beckett. It 
rocked Dempsey to his heels, but it broke Carpen- 
tier's hand. His best was not enough. There was 
an earthquake in Philistia but then out came the 
signs "Business as usual!" and Dempsey began to 
pound Carpentier in the stomach. 

The challenger faded quickly in the third round, 
and in the fourth the end came. We all suffered 
when he went down the first time, but he was up again, 
and the second time was much worse. It was in this 
knockdown that his head sagged suddenly, after he 
struck the floor, and fell back upon the canvas. He 
was conscious and his legs moved a little, but they 
would not obey him. A gorgeous human will had 
been beaten down to a point where it would no longer 
function. 

If you choose, that can stand as the last moment in 

68 



SPORT FOR ART'S SAKE 

a completed piece of art. We are sentimental enough 
to wish to add the tag that after a few minutes Car- 
pentier came out to the center of the ring and shook 
hands with Dempsey and at that moment he smiled 
again the same smile which we had seen at the begin- 
ning of the fight when he stood with his hands above 
his head. Nor is it altogether sentimental. We feel 
that one of the elements of tragedy lies in the fact 
that Fate gets nothing but the victories and the cham- 
pionships. Gesture and glamour remain with Man. 
No infighting can take that away from him. Jack 
Dempsey won fairly and squarely. He is a great 
fighter, perhaps the most efficient the world has ever 
known, but everybody came away from the arena 
talking about Carpentier. He wasn't every efficient. 
The experts say he fought an ill considered fight and 
should not have forced it. In using such a plan, they 
say, he might have lasted the whole twelve rounds. 
That was not the idea. As somebody has said, "Bet- 
ter four rounds of " but we can't remember the 

rest of the quotation. 

Dempsey won and Carpentier got all the glory. 
Perhaps we will have to enlarge our conception of 
tragedy, for that too is tragic. 



69 



XII 

JACK THE GIANT KILLER 

All the giants and most of the dragons were happy 
and contented folk. Neither fear nor shame was in 
them. They faced life squarely and liked it. And 
so they left no literature. 

The business of writing was left to the dwarfs, 
who felt impelled to distort real values in order to 
make their own pitiful existence endurable. In their 
stories the little people earned ease of mind for 
themselves by making up yarns in which they killed 
giants, dragons and all the best people of the com- 
munity who were too big and strong for them. Nat- 
urally, the giants and dragons merely laughed at such 
times as these highly drawn accounts of imaginary 
happenings were called to their attention. 

But they laughed not only too soon but too long. 
Giants and dragons have died and the stories remain. 
The world believes to-day that St. George slew the 
dragon, and that Jack killed all those giants. The 
little man has imposed himself upon the world. 
Strength and size have come to be reproaches. The 
world has been won by the weak. 

Undoubtedly, it is too late to do anything about 
this now. But there is a little dim and distant dragon 
blood in our veins. It boils when we hear the fairy 

70 



JACK THE GIANT KILLER 

stories and we remember the true version of Jack 
the Giant Killer, as it has been handed down by 
word of mouth in our family for a great many cen- 
turies. We can produce no tangible proofs, and we 
are willing to admit that the tale may have grown 
a little distorted here and there in the telling through 
the ages. Even so it sounds much more plausible to 
us than the one which has crept into the story books. 

Jack was a Celt, a liar and a meager man. He 
had great green eyes and much practice in being 
pathetic. He could sing tenor and often did. But it 
was not in this manner that he lived. By trade he was 
a newspaper man though he called himself a journal- 
ist. In his shop there was a printing press and every 
afternoon he issued a newspaper which he called 
Jack's Journal. Under this name there ran the cap- 
tion, "If you see it in Jack's Journal you may be 
sure that it actually occurred." Jack had no talent 
for brevity and little taste for truth. All in all he 
was a pretty poor newspaper man. We forgot to say 
that in addition to this he was exceedingly lazy. But 
he was a good liar. 

This was the only thing which saved him. Day 
after day he would come to the office without a single 
item of local interest, and upon such occasions he 
made a practice of sitting down and making up some- 
thing. Generally, it was far more thrilling than 
any of the real news of the community which clus- 
tered around one great highroad known as Main 
Street. 

The town lay in a valley cupped between towering 
hills. On the hills, and beyond, lived the giants and 

71 



PIECES OF HATE 

the dragons, but there was little interchange be- 
tween these fine people and the dwarfs of the vil- 
lage. Occasionally, a sliced drive from the giants' 
golf course would fall into the fields of the little 
people, who would ignorantly set down the great 
round object as a meteor from heaven. The giants 
were considerate as well as kindly and they made 
the territory of the little people out of bounds. Other- 
wise, an erratic golfer might easily have uprooted the 
first national bank, the Second Baptist Church, which 
stood next door, and Jaclis Journal with one sweep 
of his niblick. If by any chance he failed to get out 
in one, the total destruction of mankind would have 
been imminent. 

Once upon a time, a charitable dowager dragon 
sought to bring about a closer relationship between 
the peoples of the hills and the valley in spite of 
their difference in size. Hearing of a poor neglected 
family in the village, which was freezing to death 
because of want of coal, she leaned down from her 
mountain and breathed gently against the roof of the 
thatched cottage. Her intentions were excellent but 
the damage was $152,694, little of which was covered 
by insurance. After that the dragons and the giants 
decided to stop trying to do favors for the little 
people. 

Being short of news one afternoon, Jack thought 
of the great gulf which existed between his reading 
public and the big fellows on the hill and decided 
that it would be safe to romance a little. Accord- 
ingly, he wrote a highly circumstantial story of the 
manner in which he had gone to the hills and killed 

72 



JACK THE GIANT KILLER 

a large giant with nothing more than his good broad 
sword. The story was not accepted as gospel by all 
the subscribers, but it was well told, and it argued 
an undreamed of power in the arm of man. People 
wanted to believe and accordingly they did. En- 
couraged, Jack began to kill dragons and giants with 
greater frequency in his newspaper. In fact, he 
called his last evening edition The Five Star Giant 
Final and never failed to feature a killing in it under 
great red block type. 

The news of the Jack's doings came finally to the 
hill people and they were much amused, that is all 
but one giant called Fee Fi Fo Fum. The Fo Fums 
(pronounced Fohum) were one of the oldest families 
in the hills. Jack supposed that all the names he 
was using were fictitious, but by some mischance or 
other he happened one afternoon to use Fee Fi Fo 
Fum as the name of his current victim. The name 
was common enough and undoubtedly the thing was 
an accident, but Mr. Fo Fum did not see it in that 
light. To make it worse, Jack had gone on in his 
story with some stuff about captive princesses just 
for the sake of sex appeal. Not only was Mr. Fo Fum 
an ardent Methodist, but his wife was jealous. There 
was a row in the Fo Fum home (see encyclopedia 
for Great Earthquake of 1007) and Fee swore re- 
venge upon Jack. 

"Make him print a retraction," said Mrs. Fo Fum. 

"Retraction, nothing," roared Fee, "I'm going to 
eat up the presses." 

Over the hills he went with giant strides and ar- 
rived at the office of Jack's Journal just at press time. 

73 



PIECES OF HATE 

Mr. Fo Fum was a little calmer by now, but still re- 
vengeful. He spoke to Jack in a whisper which shook 
the building, and told him that he purposed to step 
on him and bite his press in two. 

"Wait until I have this last page made up," said 
Jack. 

"Killing more giants, I presume?" said Fee with 
heavy satire. 

"Bagged three this afternoon," said Jack. "Hero 
Slaughters Trio of Titans." 

"My name is Fo Fum," said the giant. Jack did 
not recognize it because of the trick pronunciation 
and the visitor had to explain. 

"Fm sorry," said Jack, "but if you've come for 
extra copies of the paper in which your name figures 
I can't give you any. The edition is exhausted." 

Fo Fum spluttered and blew a bale of paper out of 
the window. 

"Cut that out," said Jack severely. "All com- 
plaints must be made in writing. And while I'm 
about it you forgot to put your name down on one 
of those slips at the desk in the reception room. Don't 
forget to fill in that space about what business you 
want to discuss with the editor." 

Fo Fum started to roar, but Jack's high and pa- 
thetic tenor cut through the great bass like a ship's 
siren in a storm. 

"If you don't quit shaking this building I'll call 
Julius the office boy and have him throw you out." 

"Take the air," added Jack severely, disregarding 
the fact that Fo Fum before entering the office had 
found it necessary to remove the roof. But now the 

74 



JACK THE GIANT KILLER 

giant was beginning to stoop a little. His face grew 
purple and he was swaying unsteadily on his feet. 

"Hold on a minute," said Jack briskly, "don't go 
just yet. Stick around a second." 

He turned to his secretary and dictated two letters 
of congratulation to distant emperors and another to 
a cardinal. "Tell the Pope," he said in conclusion, 
"that his conduct is admirable. Tell him I said so." 

"Now, Mr. Fo Fum," said Jack turning back to 
the giant, "what I want from you is a picture. There 
is still plenty of light. I'll call up the staff photog- 
rapher. The north meadow will give us room. Of 
course, you will have to be taken lying down be- 
cause as far as the Journal goes you're dead. And 
just one thing more. Could you by any chance let 
me have one of your ears for our reception room?" 

Fo Fum had been growing more and more purple, 
but now he toppled over with a crash, carrying part 
of the building with him. Almost two years before 
he had been warned by a doctor of apoplexy and sud- 
den anger. Jack did not wait for the verdict of any 
medical examiner. He seized the speaking tube and 
shouted down to the composing room, "Jim, take out 
that old head. Make it read, 'Hero Finishes Four 
Ferocious Foemen.' And say, Jim, I want you to be 
ready to replate for a special extra with an eight 
column cut. I'll have the photographer here in a sec- 
ond. I killed that last giant right here in the office. 
Yes, and say, Jim, you'd better use that stock cut 
of me at the bottom of the page. A caption, let me 
see, put it in twenty-four point Cheltenham bold and 
make it read 'Jack — the Giant Killer.' " 

75 



XIII 

JUDGE KRINK 

H. 3d, our three-year-old son, has created for 
himself out of thin air somebody whom he can 
respect. The name of this character is Judge Krink, 
but generally he is more casually referred to as "the 
Judge." He lives, so we are informed, at some re- 
mote place called Fourace Hill. H. 3d says Judge 
Krink is his best friend. He told us yesterday that 
he had written a letter to Judge Krink and had re- 
ceived one in reply. 

"What did you say?" we asked. 

"I said I was writing him a letter." 

"What did he say?" 

"Nothing." 

This interchange of courtesies did not seem epoch- 
making even in the life of a child, but we learned 
later just how extraordinarily important and useful 
Judge Krink had become to H. 3d. Cross-examina- 
tion revealed the fact that Judge Krink has dirty 
hands which he never allows to be washed. Under 
no compulsion does he go to bed. Apparently he 
sits all day long in a garden, more democratically 
administered than any jeity park, digging dirt and 
putting it in a pail. 

76 



JUDGE KRINK 

Candy Judge Krink eats very freely and without 
let or hindrance. In fact there is nothing forbidden 
to H. 3d which Judge Krink does not do with great 
gusto. Rules and prohibitions melt before the iron 
will and determination of the Judge. We suppose 
that when the artificial restrictions of a grown-up 
world bear too heavily upon H. 3d he finds con- 
solation in the thought that somewhere in the world 
Judge Krink is doing all these things. We cannot 
get at Judge Krink and put him to bed or take away 
his trumpet. The Judge makes monkeys of all of 
us who seek to administer harsh laws in an unduly 
restricted world. The sound of his shovel beating 
against his tin pail echoes revolution all over the 
world. 

And vicariously the will of H. 3d triumphs with 
him, no matter how complete may be any mere cor- 
poreal defeat which he himself suffers. The more 
we hear about the Judge the more strongly do we 
feel drawn to him. We would like to have one of 
our own. Some day we hope to win sufficient favor 
with H. 3d to prevail upon him to introduce us to 
Judge Krink. 



We are never to meet Judge Krink after all. He 
has passed back into the nowhere from whence he 
came. It was only to-day that we learned the news, 
although we had suspected that the Judge's popu- 
larity was waning. Some visitor undertook to cross- 
question H. 3d about his relations with Krink and 
it was plain to see that the child resented it, but we 

77 



PIECES OF HATE 

were not prepared for the direction which his re- 
venge took. When we asked about the Judge to-day 
there was no response at first and it was only after a 
long pause that H. 3d answered, "I don't have 
Judge Krink any more. He's got table manners." 



78 



XIV 

FRANKINCENSE AND MYRRH 

Once there were three kings in the East and they 
were wise men. They read the heavens and they 
saw a certain strange star by which they knew that 
in a distant land the King of the world was to be 
born. The star beckoned to them and they made 
preparations for a long journey. 

From their palaces they gathered rich gifts, gold 
and frankincense and myrrh. Great sacks of precious 
stuffs were loaded upon the backs of the camels which 
were to bear them on their journey. Everything 
was in readiness, but one of the wise men seemed 
perplexed and would not come at once to join his 
two companions who were eager and impatient to be 
on their way in the direction indicated by the star. 

They were old, these two kings, and the other wise 
man was young. When they asked him he could not 
tell why he waited. He knew that his treasuries had 
been ransacked for rich gifts for the King of Kings. 
It seemed that there was nothing more which he 
could give, and yet he was not content. 

He made no answer to the old men who shouted to 
him that the time had come. The camels were 
impatient and swayed and snarled. The shadows 

79 



PIECES OF HATE 

across the desert grew longer. And still the young 
king sat and thought deeply. 

At length he smiled, and he ordered his servants 
to open the great treasure sack upon the back of the 
first of his camels. Then he went into a high cham- 
ber to which he had not been since he was a child. 
He rummaged about and presently came out and 
approached the caravan. In his hand he carried 
something which glinted in the sun. 

The kings thought that he bore some new gift more 
rare and precious than any which they had been 
able to find in all their treasure rooms. They bent 
down to see, and even the camel drivers peered from 
the backs of the great beasts to find out what it was 
which gleamed in the sun. They were curious about 
this last gift for which all the caravan had waited. 

And the young king took a toy from his hand and 
placed it upon the sand. It was a dog of tin, painted 
white and speckled with black spots. Great patches 
of paint had worn away and left the metal clear, and 
that was why the toy shone in the sun as if it had been 
silver. 

The youngest of the wise men turned a key in the 
side of the little black and white dog and then he 
stepped aside so that the kings and the camel drivers 
could see. The dog leaped high in the air and 
turned a somersault. He turned another and another 
and then fell over upon his side and lay there with 
a set and painted grin upon his face. 

A child, the son of a camel driver, laughed and 
clapped his hands, but the kings were stern. They 
rebuked the youngest of the wise men and he paid 

80 



FRANKINCENSE AND MYRRH 

no attention but called to his chief servant to make 
the first of all the camels kneel. Then he picked up 
the toy of tin and, opening the treasure sack, placed 
his last gift with his own hands in the mouth of the 
sack so that it rested safely upon the soft bags of 
incense. 

"What folly has seized you?" cried the eldest of 
the wise men. "Is this a gift to bear to the King of 
Kings in the far country?" 

And the young man answered and said: "For the 
King of Kings there are gifts of great richness, gold 
and frankincense and myrrh. 

"But this," he said, "is for the child in Bethle- 
hem!" 



81 



XV 

THE EXCELSIOR MOVEMENT 

The fun of most of the criticism of George Jean 
Nathan's lies in the fact that he has been an ir- 
reconcilable in the theater. Rules and theories have 
been disclaimed by him. Each play has been a prob- 
lem to be considered separately without relation to 
anything else except, of course, the current dramatic 
activities in Vienna, Budapest and Moscow. Most of 
his themes have been variations of the two important 
aspects of all criticism, "I like" and "I don't like." 
Masking his thrusts under a screen of indifference, 
he has generally afforded stirring comment by the 
sudden revelation of the fact that his enthusiasms and 
his hates are lively and personal. Being among the 
unclassified, the element of surprise has entered 
largely into his expression of opinion. 

But of late it is evident that Mr. Nathan has grown 
a little lonely in functioning as a guerilla in the field 
of dramatic reviewing. He is envious of the cults 
and his scorn of Clayton Hamilton, George Pierce 
Baker and William Archer seems to have been noth- 
ing more than what the Frudians call a defensive 
mechanism. He too would ally himself with a school 
— to be called the George Jean Nathan School of 
Criticism. 

82 



THE EXCELSIOR MOVEMENT 

His latest volume of collected essays, entitled "The 
Critic and the Drama," is designed as a prospectus 
for pupils. It undertakes to codify and describe in 
part the theater of to-day and to analyze and ex- 
plain much more fully George Jean Nathan. He 
insists on our knowing how the trick is done. To us 
there is something disturbing in all this. We have 
always been among those who did not care to go 
behind the scenes at the playhouse for fear that we 
might be forced to learn how thunder is contrived 
and the manner of making lightning. Still more we 
have feared that somebody would impel us into a 
corner and point out the real David Belasco. We 
much prefer our own romantic impression gathered 
wholly from his curtain speeches at first nights. 

It is painful, then, to have the new book insist 
upon our meeting the real Mr. Nathan. It was not 
our desire ever to know how his mind worked. We 
much preferred to believe that the charming little 
pieces in the Smart Set had no father and no mother 
except spontaneous combustion. To find this antic 
author burdened with theories is almost as disillusion- 
ing as to hear of Pegasus winning the 2.20 trot or 
one of the muses contracting to give a culture course 
at the Woman's Study Club of New Rochelle. 

And the worst of it is that the theories of Mr. 
Nathan, when exposed in detail, seem to be much 
like those of other men. Even those who have never 
had the privilege of attending a performance of 
Micklefluden's "Arbeit" at Das Hochhaus in Prague 
early in the spring of 1905 have much the same 
philosophy of the critic and the playhouse as Mr. 

83 



PIECES OF HATE 

Nathan. Thus we find him explaining that Shake- 
speare was "the greatest dramatist who ever lived, 
because he alone of all dramatists most accurately 
sensed the mongrel nature of his art." Mr. Nathan 
also insists sternly that criticism must be personal, 
and in discussing the relation between the printed 
and the acted drama he ingeniously makes a compari- 
son with music. 

"If drama is not meant for actors," he cries, "may 
we not also argue that music is not meant for in- 
struments?" We see no reason on earth why Mr. 
Nathan should not argue in this manner, since so 
many hundrds in the past have raised the same point. 
It is also interesting to learn that Mr. Nathan thinks 
that the drama can never approximate nature. "It 
holds the mirror not up to nature but to the spec- 
tator's individual nature." He has also discovered 
that "great drama, like great men and women, is al- 
ways just a little sad." 

"The Critic and the Drama" is probably the most 
profound book which Mr. Nathan has ever published 
and it is by far the dullest. His pages are alive with 
echoes even at such times as they are not directly 
evoked and called upon by name. One of the diffi- 
culties of profundity is overcrowding. A man may 
remain pretty much to himself as long as he chooses 
to keep his touch light and avoid research. Taking 
a suggestion from Mr. Nathan, it may be said that all 
great masses of men are a little serious. In the plains 
and the rolling country there is room for an indi- 
vidual to skip and frolic, but all the peaks are pre- 
empted. 

84 



THE EXCELSIOR MOVEMENT 

It may not be generally known that the young 
man who carried the banner with the strange device 
was lucky to die when he did. Had he eventually 
reached the summit which he sought he would have 
discovered to his great dismay that he merely con- 
stituted the 29th division in the annual outing of the 
Excelsior Marching and Chowder Club. 

Criticism gives the lie to an ancient adage. In 
this field of endeavor "The higher the fewer" may 
be recognized as an exquisite piece of irony. 



85 



XVI 

THE DOG STAR 

The Silent Call presents the most beautiful of 
all male stars now appearing in the films. In intelli- 
gence, also, his rank seems high. The picture is 
built around Strongheart, a magnificent police dog. 
There are, to be sure, minor two-legged persons in 
his support, but practically all the heavy emotional 
scenes are reserved for Strongheart. 

The dog star has virtues which are all his own. 
Any man of such glorious physique could hardly fail 
to betray self-consciousness. His virility would 
obsess him to such an extent that there certainly 
would be moments of posturing and swagger. Strong- 
heart is above all this. He never trades upon the 
fact of being a "he dog" or even emphasizes that he 
is red-blooded and 100 per cent police. 

Unlike all the other handsome devils of the screen, 
he goes about his business without smirking. His 
smile is broad, unaffected and filled with teeth and 
tongue. And above all, Strongheart does not slick 
down his hair with water or with wax. 

Fine mountain country has been selected for The 
Silent Call and we see Strongheart galloping like 
a racing snow plow through white meadows which 
foam at his progress. He fights villains with great 

86 



THE DOG STAR 

intensity and sincerity, devastates great herds of cat- 
tle and brings the picture to a fitting climax by 
leaping from a jutting cliff to drown a miscreant in 
a whirlpool. We have seen no photography as beau- 
tiful nor any picture so vivid and live in action. 

The story itself is good enough, but somewhat less 
than masterly. Repetition dulls the edge of rescue. 
The heroine, for instance, never should have been 
allowed to visit God's own country without a chap- 
eron. Her propensity for predicament seems un- 
limited. Let her be lost in a virgin forest, if only for 
a moment, and out of the nowhere some villain arises 
to buffet her with odious and violent attentions. 

She keeps Strongheart as busy as if he had been 
a traffic police dog. He is forever engaged in indi- 
cating "Stop" and "Go" to the stream of miscreants 
who bear down upon Miss Betty Houston. Villainic- 
ular traffic in the Northwest woods seems to be in 
need of constant regulation. 

Strongheart bit some bad men and barked at 
others. Both measures were effective, for this is an 
unusual dog in that his bark is just as bad as his bite. 
He never questioned the character or the intentions 
of the heroine. After all, he was only a dumb animal 
and his loyalty was tinged with no suspicions. 

We must admit that the human frailty of doubt 
sometimes led us to carp a little at the rectitude of 
Miss Houston. Her plights were so numerous that 
we were mean enough to wonder whether all were 
accidental. There was one particular villain, for 
instance, who attempted to abduct her no less than 
four times. We could not dismiss the thought that 

87 



PIECES OF HATE 

perhaps she had given him some encouragement. 
Indeed we would not have been surprised if at last 
there has come a caption quoting the heroine as say- 
ing: "Get along with you, dog, and mind your own 
business." This, however, did not prove to be within 
the scheme of the scenario writers. 

In all justice to Miss Houston, it must be said that, 
though she owed Strongheart much, he was also in 
her debt. It took the love of a good woman to drag 
him back from degradation. He was a nice dog 
until his master left the ranch and went East to 
correct the proofs of a new book. Strongheart could 
not understand that and neither could we. It seemed 
to us as if the publisher might have sent the galleys 
on by mail. 

Deprived of the care of his owner, Strongheart 
began to revert to type. He had been a wolf and he 
took to long hikes away from home. When he grew 
hungry he killed a cow. The cattle men put a price 
upon his head and Strongheart became an outcast. 

His return to civilization was effected by the first 
attack upon Miss Houston. Even a wolf knows that 
it is only a coward who would strike a woman. The 
police instinct proved stronger than the call of the 
wild and the great beast bounded out of the thicket 
and seized Ash Brent by the trousers. This was the 
first of many meetings between Ash and Strongheart. 
The last and decisive encounter was in the whirlpool. 
The dog swam to the bank alone and sat upon the 
bank to howl the piercing death cry of the wolf. 

There is a suggestion of a happy ending in The 
Silent Call because Strongheart's original master 

88 



THE DOG STAR 

falls in love with Miss Houston and marries her. It 
was probably the only union for the heroine which the 
dog would have sanctioned, and yet we cannot imag- 
ine that it left him entirely happy. Once the much 
beset young woman was given over into the care of a 
good man, Strongheart must have realized that his 
vocation was gone. Ash Brent was dead and all the 
other villains had been captured by the Sheriff. 
Placidity stared Strongheart in the face. 

To be sure, he bit people only because they were 
bad, but, like most reformers, he had learned to love 
his work. It was to him more than a duty. We 
doubt whether he remained long with the honey- 
mooners. It is our notion that on the first dark night 
he took to the wilds again. We can imagine him 
stalking a contented cow in the moonlight. The poor 
beast lowers her head for grass and Strongheart, 
seeking to convince himself that the horns have been 
employed in an overt act, mutters: "You would, 
would you!" Then comes the leap and the crashing of 
the great wolf jaws. It is the invariable tragedy of 
the reformer that, though his work has been accom- 
plished, he cannot retire. First come the giants and 
then the windmills. 



89 



XVII 

ALTRUISTIC POKER 

Although Ella Wheeler Wilcox's autobiography is 
a human document throughout, nothing in it has in- 
terested us quite so much as her description of her 
husband's poker system in the chapter called "The 
Compelling Lover/' 

"In my early married life," writes Mrs. Wilcox, 
"he was much in demand for the game of poker," 
but a little later she explains, "Even in his love of 
cards and in his monotonous life of travel for the first 
seven years after our marriage, when card games 
were his only recreation, he introduced his idea of 
altruism. This, too, was a matter known only to me. 
He played games of chance only with men he knew; 
whatever money he made was kept in a separate purse, 
and when he came home he asked me to help him 
distribute it among deserving people " 

Any new system is worth trying when your luck 
is bad, and yet it seems to us that there are funda- 
mental objections to the scheme suggested by Mrs. 
Wilcox. At least, we don't think it would work well 
for us. If we drew a club to four hearts we might 
bravely push all our chips forward and say "Raise 
it," provided the risk was ours alone. We couldn't 
do that if we were playing for Uncle Albert. Our 

90 



ALTRUISTIC POKER 

anxiety would betray us. Even if Aunt Hattie had 
been mentally selected as the beneficiary of the eve- 
ning we should feel compelled to play the cards close 
to our chest. She is a dear old lady and not a bit 
prudish, but we're sure she would never approve of 
whooping the pot on a king and an ace and a seven 
spot. 

Then take the debatable question of two pairs. Per- 
sonally we have always believed in raising on them 
before the draw. Such a procedure is dangerous, 
perhaps, but profitable in the long run. Under the 
Wilcox system it might be difficult to take the larger 
viewpoint. It is more than possible that we would 
grow timorous if Cousin Susie's hope of a comfort- 
able old age rested upon eights and deuces. 

Some years ago we used to encounter, every now 
and again, a kindly middle-aged gentleman who was 
playing to send his brother to Harvard. It weighed 
on him. Whenever he looked at his cards he had 
his brother's chance of an education in mind. In 
fact, he grew so excessively cautious that anybody 
could bluff him out of quite large pots merely by 
reaching for a white chip. Some of the players, 
we fear, used to take advantage of this fact. As 
we remember it, the young man finally went to the 
C. C. N. Y. 

Of course, Ella Wheeler Wilcox makes no claim 
that the system is a winning one. The implication 
is quite the other way. After all, she writes of her 
husband, "He t was much in demand for the game of 
poker." 

91 



XVIII 

THE WELL MADE REVIEW 

One of the simplest ways in which a critic can 
put a play in its place is to refer to it as "well 
made." The phrase has come to be a reproach. It 
suggests a third act in which the friend of the fam- 
ily tells the husband, "Take her out and buy her a 
good dinner," and the lover decides that he will go 
back to Mesopotamia "Alone!" 

George Bernard Shaw changed the style, and 
taught playgoers to refuse to accept technic as some- 
thing just as good as spiritual significance. We now 
await the revolt against the well-made revue. Each 
of the Ziegfeld Follies is perfect of its kind, but just 
as in the plays of Pinero, form has triumphed over 
substance. The name Ziegfeld on the label means a 
magnificent product perfect in every detail with com- 
plete satisfaction guaranteed, but it is a standardized 
product. You know just what you are going to get. 
Ziegfeld scenery, Ziegfeld costumes mean something 
definite. Even "a Ziegfeld chorus girl" suggests an 
unvarying type. The hood is as unmistakable as 
that of a Ford automobile. 

At times one is struck with a longing to find a 
single homely girl among all the merry marchers. 
And there is at least a shadow of a wish to encounter, 
likewise, something in a song or a set or a costume 
rough, unfinished and ungainly. Alexander sighed 

92 



THE WELL MADE REVIEW 

and so might Ziegfeld. His supremacy in the field 
of musical revue is unquestioned. Even the shows 
with which he has no connection follow his modes 
as best they can, though sometimes at a great dis- 
tance. He really owes it to himself and to his public 
to put on, in the near future, a very bad revue so 
that in the ensuing year that most precious element 
in entertainment — surprise — may again come to the 
theater through him. The first of all the Ziegfeld 
Follies must have furnished its audience with a night 
of startled rapture. The rest have produced a pleas- 
ant evening. 

Burdened by years of success, Mr. Ziegfeld must 
be hampered by innumerable rules about revue mak- 
ing. He has created tradition and probably it rises 
up in front of him now and again to bark his shins. 
The Follies is still an entertainment, but now it is 
also an institution. Plan, premeditation and the note 
of service must all have won their places in the mak- 
ing of each new show in the succession. The critic 
will not depart in peace until he has seen somehow, 
somewhere an altogether irresponsible revue. It will 
be produced not by Edward Royce but by spontane- 
ous combustion. Some of it will be terrible. Few of 
the costumes will fit and many of them will be in bad 
taste. None of the tunes will be hummed by the au- 
dience as it leaves the theater. But, nevertheless and 
notwithstanding, this irresponsible revue of which I 
speak is going to contain two good jokes. 

I had at least a glimmer of hope that Shuffle Along 
might be the first blow of the revolution against the 
well-made revue. Early explorers in the Sixty-Sec- 

93 



PIECES OF HATE 

ona Street Music Hall came back glowing with dis- 
covery. And yet after seeing the negro revue it seems 
to me that stout Cortes and all his men were duped. 
In book and music and dancing Shuffle Along fol- 
lows Broadway tradition just as closely as it can. It 
is rough with old things which have crumbled and 
not with new things which are unfinished. And yet 
it is easy to understand the thrill which swept through 
some of the pioneers who were the first to see Shuffle 
Along. In it there is one quality possessed by no 
other show which has been seen in New York this 
year. Most musical comedy performers seem to be 
altruists who are putting themselves out to a great 
extent in order to please you and the other paying 
customers. Shuffle Along is entirely selfish. No 
matter how enthusiastic the audience, it cannot possi- 
bly get as much fun out of the show as the perform- 
ers. Not since the last trip to New York of the Tri- 
angle Club have I seen the amateur spirit more fully 
realized in the theater. Perhaps the performers get 
paid, but it does not seem fitting. The more engag- 
ing theory is that each member of the chorus of 
Shuffle Along who keeps his work up at top pitch un- 
til the end of the season receives a large blue sweater 
with a white "S. A." on the front and is then allowed 
to break training. The ten best performers, in ad- 
dition, are tapped on the shoulder. There is a rumor 
that social distinction as well as merit enters into this 
selection, but it has never, to my knowledge, been con- 
firmed. 

Of course, nothing in the remarks above is to be 
construed as implying that people in the Ziegfeld 

94 



THE WELL MADE REVIEW 

choruses do not have a good time. Such a statement 
would certainly be far from the facts. As somebody 
or other has so aptly said, "It's great to be young and 
a Ziegfeld chorus girl." The difference is that no 
Caucasian chorister, including the Scandinavian, has 
the faculty of enjoying herself with the same frank- 
ness and abandon as the African. Centuries of civ- 
ilization and weeks of training make it impossible. 
The Follies girl knows what she likes, but she has 
been taught not to point. A certain reserve and reti- 
cence is part of the Ziegfeld tradition. Even the most 
daring of Mr. Ziegfeld's experiments in summer 
costuming are more esthetic than erotic. Though the 
legs of the longest showgirl may be bare, one feels 
that she is clothed in reverence. When the lights 
begin to dim, and the soft music sounds to indicate 
that the current Ben Ali Haggin tableau is about to 
be disclosed, I am always a little nervous. So solemn 
and dignified is the entire atmosphere of the affair 
that I feel a little like a Peeping Tom in the presence 
of Godiva and generally I cover my eyes in order 
that they may be preserved for the final processional 
in which one girl will be Coal, another Aviation and a 
third the Monroe Doctrine. 

The parade is one of the traditions of the Follies. 
"When in doubt make them march," is the way the 
rule reads in Mr. Ziegfeld's notebook. All of which 
opens the way to the suggestion that Mr. Ziegfeld 
should try the experiment some year of cutting about 
$100,000 out of his bill for costumes and using the 
money to buy a joke. In that case the marching 
chorus girls could pass a given point. 

95 



XIX 

AN ADJECTIVE A DAY 

It was a child in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy 
tale who finally told the truth by crying out, "He 
hasn't got anything on," as the king marched through 
the streets clad only in the magic cloth woven and 
cut by the swindling tailor. You may remember that 
everybody else kept silent because the tailor had 
given out that the cloth was visible only to such 
as were worthy of their position in life. The child 
knew nothing of this and anyway he didn't have any 
position in life, so he piped up and cried, "He hasn't 
got anything on." And though he was but a child 
others took up the cry, and finally even the king was 
convinced and ran to get his bathrobe. The tailor, 
as we remember the story, was executed. 

In course of time that child grew up, and married, 
and died leaving heirs behind him. And they in 
turn were not so barren, so that to-day vast numbers 
of his descendants are in the world. Nearly all of 
them are critics of one sort or another, but mostly 
young critics. Like their great ancestor they are 
frank and shrill, and either valiant or foolhardy as 
you choose to look at it. Certainly they seldom hesi- 
tate to rush in. No, there is no doubt at all that they 
are just a wee bit hasty, these descendants of the 
child. It is rather useful that every now and then one 
of them should point a finger of scorn at some falsely 

96 



AN ADJECTIVE A DAY 

great figure in the arts and cry out his nakedness at 
top voice. But sometimes they make mistakes. It 
has happened not infrequently that worthy and re- 
spectable artists and authors in great coats, close- 
fitting sack suits, and heavy woolen underwear, have 
been greeted by some member of the clan with the 
traditional cry, "He hasn't got anything on." 

This may be embarrassing as well as unfair. Ever 
since the child scored his sensational critical success 
so many years ago, all his sons have been eager to do 
likewise. They have inherited extraordinary sus- 
picion regarding the raiment of all great men. Even 
when they are forced to admit that some particular 
king is actually clad in substantial achievement of 
one sort or another, they are still apt to carp about 
the fit and cut of his clothing. Almost always they 
maintain that he borrowed his shoes from some one 
else and that he cannot fill them. 

In regard to humbler citizens they are apt to carry 
charity to great lengths. In addition to the incident 
recorded by Andersen they cherish another legend 
about the child. According to the tradition, he wrote 
a will just before he died in which he said, "Thank 
heaven I leave not a single adjective to any of my 
descendants. I have spent them all." 

The clan is notoriously extravagant. They live for 
all the world like Bedouins of the Sahara without 
thought of the possibility of a rainy day. Their 
gaudiest years come early in life. Middle age and 
beyond is apt to be tragic. Almost nothing in the 
experience of mankind is quite so heartrending as 
the spectacle of one of these young critics, grown 

97 



PIECES OF HATE 

gray, coming face to face in his declining years with 
a masterpiece. At such times he is apt to be seized 
with a tremor and stricken dumb. Undoubtedly he is 
tormented with the memory of all the adjectives which 
he flung away in his youth. They are gone beyond 
recall. He fumbles in his purse and finds nothing 
except small change worn smooth. The best he can 
do is to fling out a "highly creditable piece of work" 
and go on his way. 

Still he has had fun for his adjectives for all that. 
There is a compensating glow in the heart of the 
young critic when he remembers the day an obscure 
author came to him asking bread, though rather ex- 
pecting a stone, and he with a flourish reached down 
into the breadbox and gave the poor man layer cake. 

"After all," one of the young critics told me in 
justifying his mode of life, "it may be just as tragic 
as you say to be caught late in life with a masterpiece 
in front of you and not a single adequate adjective 
left in your purse. Yes, I'll grant you that it's un- 
fortunate. But there's still another contingency which 
I mean to avoid. Wouldn't it be a rotten sell to die 
with half your adjectives still unused? You know 
you can't take them with you to heaven. Of what 
possible use would they be up there? Even the 
bravest superlatives would seem pretty mean and 
petty in that land. Think of being blessed with milk 
and honey for the first time and trying to express 
your gratitude and wonder with, 'The best I ever 
tasted.' No, sir. I'm going to get ready for the new 
eternal words by using up all the old ones before I 
die." 

98 



XX 

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER 

They call him "the unknown hero." It is enough, 
it is better that we should know him as "the unknown 
soldier." "Hero" suggests a superman and implies 
somebody exalted above his fellows. This man was 
one of many. We do not know what was in his heart 
when he died. It is entirely possible that he was a 
fearful man. He may even have gone unwillingly 
into the fight. That does not matter now. The im- 
portant thing is that he was alive and is dead. 

He was drawn from a far edge of the world by the 
war and in it he lost even his identity. War may 
have been well enough in the days when it was a 
game for heroes, but now it sweeps into the combat 
everything and every man within a nation. The 
unknown soldier stands for us as symbol of this blind 
and far-reaching fury of modern conflict. His death 
was in vain unless it helps us to see that the whole 
world is our business. No one is too great to be 
concerned with the affairs of mankind, and no one 
too humble. 

The unknown soldier was a typical American and 
it is probable that once upon a time he used to speak 
of faraway folk as "those foreigners." He thought 
they were no kin of his, but he died in one of the 

99 



PIECES OF HATE 

distant lands. His blood and the blood of all the 
world mingled in a common stream. 

The body of the unknown soldier has come home, 
but his spirit will wander with his brothers. There 
will be no rest for his soul until the great democracy 
of death has been translated into the unity of life. 



100 



XXI 

A TORTOISE SHELL HOME 

Every once in so often somebody gets up in a pulpit 
or on a platform and declares that home life in 
America is being destroyed. The agent of devasta- 
tion varies. According to the mood of the man with 
forebodings, it is the motion pictures, the new dances, 
bridge, or the comic supplements in the Sunday news- 
papers. It seems to us that these defenders of the 
home are themselves offensively solicitous. If we 
happened to be a home, we rather think that we 
would resent the overeagerness of our champions. 
They act as if the thing they seek to preserve were 
so weak and pitiful that it must go down before the 
gust of any new enthusiasm. 

After all, the home is much older than these 
dragons which are said to be capable of devouring it. 
Least of all are we disposed to worry over deadly 
effects from the new dances. This fear has recently 
been put into vivid form by Hartley Manners in a 
play called "The National Anthem," in which Lau- 
rette Taylor, his wife, was starred. Jazz, according 
to Mr. Manners, is our anthem. The hero and the 
heroine of his play dance themselves to the brink of 
perdition. The end is tragic, for the husband dies 
and the wife narrowly escapes from the effects of 

101 



PIECES OF HATE 

poison which she has taken by mistake while dazed 
from drink and dancing. 

This seems to us special and exceptional. A vice 
must be easy to be universally dangerous. All the 
moralists assure us that descent by the primrose path 
is facile. Skill in the new dances argues to us a 
certain strength of character. We do not understand 
how any person of flabby will can become proficient. 
In our own case we must confess that it is not our 
strength and uprightness which has kept us from 
jazz, but such traits as timidity and lack of applica- 
tion. As a boy we painstakingly learned the two- 
step. For this we deserve no great credit. It was 
not our wish, and only the vigorous application of 
parental influence carried us through. After we 
broke away from the home ties we began to back- 
slide. The dances changed from month to month 
and we lacked the hardihood to keep up. Cravenly 
we quit and slumped into a job. 

None of our excuses can be made persuasive 
enough for exoneration. All there is to be said for 
work as opposed to dancing is that it is so much 
easier. Of course, our respect is infinite for the 
sturdy ones who have gone through the flames of 
cleansing and perfecting fire and have earned the 
right to step out upon the waxed floor. Few of them 
escape the marks of their time of tribulation. Every 
close observer of American dancing must have noted 
the set expression upon the face of all participants. 
There is hardly one who might not serve as a model 
for General Grant exclaiming: "I propose to fight it 
out on this line if it takes all summer." 

102 



A TORTOISE SHELL HOME 

No form of national activity begins to be so con- 
scientious as dancing. Up-to-date physicians, we 
understand, are beginning to prescribe it as tonic and 
penance for patients growing slack in their attitude 
toward life. At a cabaret recently a man pointed out 
a dancer in the middle of the floor and said: "That 
woman in the bright red dress is fifty-six years old." 
We were properly surprised, and he went on: "Her 
story is interesting. Two years ago she went to a 
neurologist because of a general physical and nervous 
breakdown. He said to her: 'Madam, the trouble is 
that you are growing old, and, worse than that, you 
are ready to admit it. You must fight against it. 
You must hold on to youth as if it were a horizontal 
bar and chin yourself.' " 

We looked at the woman more closely and saw 
that she was obeying the doctor's orders literally. 
Her fight was a gallant one. Dancing had served to 
keep down her weight and improve her blood pres- 
sure, but there was not the slightest suggestion that 
she was enjoying herself. She had bought advice 
and she was intent upon using it. And as we looked 
over the entire floor we could see no one who seemed 
to be dancing for the fun of it. A few took a pardon- 
able pride in their perfection of fancy steps, but that 
emotion is not quite akin to joy. They were dancing 
for exercise or prestige, or to fulfill social obligations. 

All this is admirable in its way, but we have not 
sufficient faith in the persistence of human gallantry 
to believe that it can last forever. The home will get 
every last one of the dancers yet because it is so much 
easier to loaf in an easy-chair than to keep up the 

103 



PIECES OF HATE 

continual bickering against old age, indolence, and 
the selfishness of comfort. 

Motion pictures may be more dangerous because 
we are informed that they are still in their infancy. 
But perhaps the home is also. In spite of the length 
of time during which it has been going on, its possi- 
bilities of development are enormous. Within the 
memory of living man a home was generally sup- 
posed to be a place where people sat and stared at 
each other. Sometimes they visited neighbors, but 
these trips were traditionally restricted to occasions 
upon which the friends were ill and too helpless to 
carry on a conversation. If any one doubts that talk 
is a recent development in home life, let him consider 
the musical instruments of a generation which is gone. 
Take the spinnet, for instance, and note that even the 
most carefully modulated whisper would have 
drowned out its feeble tinkle. 

To be sure, our ancestors had books and a few 
magazines, but they were not of a sort to promote 
general conversation. Only the grown-ups were 
capable of exchanging their views on Mr. Thackeray's 
latest novel. But now, when the group returns from 
an evening at the motion-picture theater where "The 
Kid" or "Shoulder Arms" is being shown, it is im- 
possible to keep anybody out of the discussion on 
account of his lack of years. Little Ferdinand has 
just as much right to an opinion about the prowess 
of Charlie Chaplin as grandpa, and, according to our 
observation, it is a right almost certain to be exer- 
cised. 

Of course, before we began this discussion of the 
104 



A TORTOISE SHELL HOME 

decay of home life we should have set about coming 
to some definition acceptable to both sides of the 
controversy. Now, when it is too late to do anything 
about it, we are struck by the fact that we are prob- 
ably talking at cross purposes. It is our contention 
that man is not less than the turtle. We think it is 
entirely possible for him to carry his home life 
around with him. It would not seem to us, for 
instance, that home life was impaired if the family 
took in the movies now and again or even very fre- 
quently. Nor are we willing to accept a bridge party 
down the street as something alien and outside. In 
other words, a man's home (and, of course, we mean 
a woman's home as well) ought not to be defined by 
the walls of his house or even by the fences of the 
front yard. The anti-suffragists once had the slogan 
"Woman's place is in the home," but what they really 
meant was "in the house," since they used to insist 
that the business of voting would take her out of it. 
It seems to us that the woman of to-day should have 
a home with limits at least as spacious as those of the 
whole world. And so naturally she ought to have her 
share in all the concerns of life. 



105 



XXII 



I ? D DIE FOR DEAR OLD RUTGERS 



"He fought the last twenty rounds with a broken 
hand." "The final quarter was played on sheer 
nerve, for an examination at the end of the game 
showed that his backbone was shattered and both 
legs smashed." "Although knocked senseless in the 
opening chukker, he finished the match and no one 
realized his predicament until he confessed to his 
team mates in the clubhouse." 

These are, of course, incidents common enough in 
the life of any of our sporting heroes. To a true 
American sportsman a set of tennis is held in about 
the same esteem as a popular playwright holds a 
woman's honor. There is no point at which "I give 
up" can be sanctioned. Not only must the amateur 
athlete sell his life dearly, but he must keep on selling 
it until he is carried off the field. Accordingly, it is 
easy to understand why Forest Hills seethed with 
indignation when Mile. Suzanne Lenglen walked (she 
could still walk, mind you) over to an official in the 
middle of a tennis match and announced that she was 
ill and would not continue. It was quite obvious to 
all that the Frenchwoman was still alive and breathing 
and the thing was shocking heresy. 

106 



I'D DIE FOR OLD RUTGERS 

The writer is not disposed to defend Suzanne's 
heresy to the full. He believes that Mile. Lenglen 
was ill, but he feels that she erred, not because she 
resigned, but because she did it with so little grace. 
She seemed to have no appreciation of the hardship 
which the sudden termination of the match imposed 
upon Mrs. Molla Bjurstedt Mallory. However, 
Molla did and came off the court swearing. 

It was an embarrassing moment, but possibly a 
moral can be dug from it all the same. For the first 
time in the experience of many, a new sort of athletic 
tradition was vividly presented. No one will deny 
that the French knew the gesture of Thermopylae as 
well as the next one, but they have never thought to 
associate it with sports. The gorgeous and gallant 
Carpentier has, upon occasions in his ring career, 
resigned. He showed no lack of nerve on these occa- 
sions, but merely followed a line of conduct which is 
foreign to us. Pitted at those particular times against 
men who were too heavy for him and facing certain 
defeat, he admitted their superiority somewhat before 
the inevitable end. Like a chess master, he sensed 
the fact that victory was no longer in the balance, 
and that nothing remained to be done except some 
mopping up. Such perfunctory and merely academic 
action did not seem to him to come properly within 
the realm of sport, particularly if he was to be the 
man mopped up. 

American sport commentators who knew these 
facts in the record of Carpentier were disposed to 
announce before his match with Dempsey that he 
would most certainly seek to avoid a knockout by 

107 



PIECES OF HATE 

stopping as soon as he was hurt. His astounding 
courage surprised them. And yet it was exactly the 
sort of courage they should have expected. He did 
not fight on through gruelling punishment just for the 
sake of being a martyr. He went through it because 
up to the very end he believed that his great right 
hand punch might win for him, and even at the last 
Carpentier was still swinging. 

In spite of the sentimental objections of the old- 
fashioned follower of sports, the tradition which was 
bred out of Sparta by Anglo-Saxon has begun to 
decay. Referees do step in and end unequal con- 
tests. Ring followers themselves are known to cry, 
"Stop the fight" at times when the match has become 
no longer a contest. "Mollycoddles!" shriek the 
ghosts of the bareknuckle days who float over the 
ring, but we do not heed their voices. Again, we 
have decreasing patience with the severely injured 
football player who struggles against the restraining 
arms of the coaches when they would take him out 
because of his disabilities. To-day he is less a hero 
than a rather dramatically self-conscious young man 
who puts a gesture above the success of his team. 

There is still ground for the modification of a 
sporting tradition which has made those things which 
we call games become at moments ordeals having no 
relation to sport. Losing is still considered such a 
serious business that an elaborate ritual has been 
built up as to what constitutes good losing. We not 
only demand that a man shall die, if need be, for the 
Lawn Tennis Championship of Eastern Rhode Island, 
but we go so far as to prescribe the exact manner in 

108 



I'D DIE FOR OLD RUTGERS 

which he shall die. A set, silent and determined 
demeanor is generally favored. 

From Japan have come hints of something better 
in this direction. Every American engaged in sport 
should be required to spend an afternoon in watching 
Zenzo Shimidzu of the Japanese Davis Cup team. 
Shimidzu's contribution to sport is the revelation that 
a man may try hard and yet have lots of fun even 
when things go against him. He seems to reserve his 
most winning smile for his losing shots. Once in 
his match against Bill Johnston he was within a point 
of set and down from the sky a high short lob was de- 
scending. Shimidzu was ready for what seemed a 
certain kill. He was as eager as an avenging sparrow. 
Back came his racquet and down it swung upon the 
ball, only to drive it a foot out of court. Immedi- 
ately, the little man burst into a silent gale of mer- 
riment. The fact that he had a set within his grasp 
and had thrown it away seemed to him almost the 
funniest thing which had ever happened to him. 

Of course, this is a manner which might be difficult 
for us Americans to acquire. Unlike the Japanese we 
have only a limited sense of humor. Its limits end 
for the most part with things which happen to other 
people. We laugh at the pictures in which we see 
Happy Hooligan being kicked by the mule, but we 
would not be able to laugh if we ourselves met the 
same mule under similar circumstances. However, 
in an effort to popularize the light and easy demeanor 
in sporting competition it is fair to point out that it 
is not only a beautiful thing but that it is also ef- 
fective. 

109 



PIECES OF HATE 

Shimidzu almost beat Tilden by the very fact that 
he refused to do anything but smile when things went 
against him. The tall American would smash a ball 
to a far corner of the court for what seemed a certain 
kill, but the little man would leap across the turf and 
send it back. And as he stroked the ball he smiled. 
It was discouraging enough for Tilden to be pitted 
against a Gibraltar, but it seemed still more hopeless 
from the fact that even when he managed to split the 
rock it broke only into the broadest of grins. 

Ten years of work by one of our most prominent 
editors for a war with Japan were swept away by 
the Davis Cup matches. It is hard to understand how 
there can be any race problem concerning a people 
with so excellent a backhand and so genial a disposi- 
tion. Indeed, many of the things which our friends 
from California have told us about Japan did not 
seem to be so. All of us have heard endlessly about 
the rapidity with which the Japanese increase. There 
was no proof of it at Forest Hills. When the doubles 
match started there were on one side of the net two 
Japanese. When the match ended, almost four hours 
later, there was still just two Japanese. 



110 



XXIII 

ARE EDITORS PEOPLE? 

One of the characters in "A Prince There Was" is 
the editor of a magazine and, curiously enough, he 
has been made the hero of the film. Of course, there 
may be something to be said for editors. Indeed, 
we have heard them trying to say it, and yet they 
remain among the forces of darkness and of mystery. 
By every rule of logic the editor in any story ought 
to be the villain. 

It is not the darkness so much as the mystery 
which disturbs us. Only rarely have we been able 
to understand what an editor was talking about. 
Sometimes we have suspected that neither of us did. 
There was, for instance, the man who tapped upon 
his flat-topped desk and said with great precision and 
deliberation, "When you are writing for Blank's Mag- 
azine, you want to remember that Blank's is a mag- 
azine which is read at five o'clock in the afternoon." 

He was our first editor. Disillusion had not yet 
set in. We still believed in Santa Glaus and sanc- 
tums. And so we took home with us the advice about 
five o'clock and pondered. We remembered it per- 
fectly, but that was not much good. "Blank's is a 
magazine which is read at five o'clock in the after- 
Ill 



PIECES OF HATE 

noon." How were we to interpret this declaration of 
a principle? It was beyond our powers to write with 
ladyfingers. Possibly the editor meant that our style 
needed a little more lemon in it. There could be no 
complaint, we felt sure, against the sugar. Ten years 
of hard service on a New York morning newspaper 
had granulated us pretty thoroughly. 

Having made up our mind that a slight increase in 
the acid content per column might enable us to qual- 
ify with the editor as a man who could write for five 
o'clock in the afternoon, we were suddenly confronted 
with a new problem. Blank's was an international 
magazine. Did the editor mean five o'clock by Lon- 
don or San Francisco time? Until we knew the 
answer there was no good running our head against 
rejection slips. There was no way to tell whether he 
would like an essay entitled "On Pipe Smoking Be- 
fore Breakfast in Surrey," or whether he would prefer 
a little something on "Is the Garden of Eden Men- 
tioned in the Bible Actually California?" Nat- 
urally, if one were writing with San Francisco's five 
o'clock in mind he would go on to make some com- 
parison between Los Angeles and the serpent. 

After extended deliberation, we decided that per- 
haps it would be best not to try to write for Blank's at 
all. It might put a strain upon the versatility of a 
young man too hard for him to bear. Suppose, for 
instance, he worked faithfully and molded his style 
to meet all the demands and requirements of five 
o'clock in the afternoon, and then suppose just as he 
was in the middle of a long novel, daylight saving 
should be introduced? His art would then be exactly 

112 



ARE EDITORS PEOPLE? 

one hour off and he would be obliged to turn back 
his hands along with those of the clock. 

Of course, even though you understand an editor 
you may not agree with him. The makers of maga- 
zines incline a little to dogma. Give a man a swivel 
chair and he will begin to lean back and tell you what 
the public wants. Gazing through his window over 
the throng of Broadway, a faraway look will come 
into his eyes and he will begin to speak very earnestly 
about the farmer in Iowa. The farmer in Iowa is 
enormously convenient to editors. He is as handy as 
a rejection slip. In refusing manuscripts which he 
doesn't want to take, an editor almost invariably 
blames it on some distant subscriber. "I like this 
very much myself," he will explain. "It's great stuff. 
I wish I could use it. That part about the bobbed 
hair is a scream. But none of it would mean any- 
thing to the farmer in Iowa. Won't you show 
me something again that isn't quite so sophis- 
ticated?" 

Riding through Iowa, we always make it a point to 
shake our fist at the landscape. And if by any chance 
the train passes a farmer we try to hit him with some 
handy missile. And why not? He kept us out of 
print. At least they said he did. 

And yet though editors are invariably doleful 
about the capacity of the farmer in Iowa and points 
west, it would be quite inaccurate to suggest any 
fundamental pessimism. An editor is always opti- 
mistic, particularly when a contributor asks for his 
check. But it really is a sincere and deep grained 
hopefulness. No editor could live from day to day 

113 



PIECES OF HATE 

without the faculty or arguing himself into the belief 
that the next number of his magazine is not going to 
be quite so bad as the last one. 

Unfortunately he is not content to be a solitary 
tippler in good cheer. He feels that it is his duty to 
discover authors and inspirit them. Indeed, the 
average editor cannot escape feeling that telling a 
writer to do something is almost the same thing as 
performing it himself. 

The editorial mind, so called, is afflicted with the 
King Cole complex. Types subject to this delusion 
are apt to believe that all they need do to get a thing 
is to call for it. You may remember that King Cole 
called for his bowl just as if there were no such thing 
as a Volstead amendment. "What we want is humor," 
says an editor, and he expects the unfortunate author 
to trot around the corner and come back with a quart 
of quips. 

An editor would classify "What we want is humor" 
as a piece of cooperation on his part. It seems to 
him a perfect division of labor. After all, nothing 
remains for the author to do except to write. 

Sometimes the mogul of a magazine will be even 
more specific. We confessed to an editor once that 
we were not very fertile in ideas, and he said, "Never 
mind, I'll think up something for you." 

"Let me see," he continued, and crinkled his brow 
in that profound way which editors have. Suddenly 
the wrinkles vanished and his face lighted up. 
"That's it," he cried. "I want you to go and do us a 
series something like Mr. Dooley." He leaned back 
and fairly beamed satisfaction. He had done his 

114 



ARE EDITORS PEOPLE? 

best to make a humorist out of us. If failure fol- 
lowed it could only be because of shortsightedness 
and stubbornness on our part. We had our assign- 
ment. 



115 



XXIV 

WE HAVE WITH US THIS EVENING- 



We have always wondered just what it is which 
frightens the after dinner speaker. He is protected 
by tradition, the Christian religion and the game laws. 
And yet he trembles. Perhaps he knows that he is 
going to be terrible, but it is common knowledge that 
after dinner speakers seldom reform. The life gets 
them. It was thought, once upon a time, that the prac- 
tice was in some way connected with alcoholic stimu- 
lation, but this has since been disproved. After din- 
ner speaking is a separate vice. Total abstainers 
from every other evil practice are not immune. 

The chief fault is that an irrationally inverted for- 
mula has come into being. The after dinner speaker 
almost invariably begins with his apology. He is 
generally becomingly frank when he first gets to his 
feet. There is always a confident prophecy that the 
audience is not going to be very much interested in 
what he has to say and the admission that he is pretty 
sure to do the job badly. Unfortunately, no speaker 
ever succeeds in deterring himself by these forebod- 
ings of disaster. He never fails to go on and prove 
the truth of his own estimate of inefficiency. 

Many men profess to find the greatest difficulty in 
getting to their feet. Perhaps this is sincere, but the 

116 



WE HAVE WITH US- 



task does not seem to be one-sixteenth as hard as sit- 
ting down again. People whose vision is perfect in 
every other respect suffer from a curious astigmatism 
which prevents them from recognizing a stopping 
point when they come to it. We suggest to some 
ingenious inventor that he devise a combination of 
time clock and trip hammer by which a dull, blunt 
instrument shall be liberated at the end of five 
minutes so that it may fall with great force, killing 
the after dinner speaker and amusing the spectators. 
The mechanical difficulties might be great, but the 
machine would be even more useful if it could be at- 
tuned in some way so that the hammer should fall, 
if necessary, before the expiration of the five minutes, 
the instant the speaker said, "That reminds me of the 
story about the two Irishmen." 

Funny stories are endurable, in moderation, if only 
the teller is perfectly frank in introducing them for 
their own sake and not pretending that they have any 
conceivable relationship to the endowment fund of 
Wellesley College, or the present condition of the 
silk business in America. To such length has hypoc- 
risy gone, that there is now at large and dining out, a 
gentleman who makes a practice of kicking the leg of 
the table and then remarking, "Doesn't that sound 
like a cannon? — Speaking of cannon, that reminds 
me " 

Another young man of our own acquaintance has 
been using the same anecdote for all sorts of occa- 
sions for the last four years. His story concerns an 
American soldier who drove a four-mule team past 
the first line trench in the darkness and started rum- 

117 



PIECES OF HATE 

bling along an old road that led across no-man's- 
land. He had gone a few yards when a doughboy 
jumped up out of a listening post and began to signal 
to him. "What's the matter?" shouted the driver. 

"Shush! Shush!" hissed the outpost with great 
terror and intensity. "You're driving right toward 
the German lines. For Heaven's sake go back and 
don't speak above a whisper." 

"Whisper, Hell!" roared the driver. "I've got to 
turn four mules around." 

It may be that there actually was such an outpost 
and such a driver, but neither had any intention of 
acting as a perpetual symbol and yet we' know posi- 
tively that this particular story has been introduced 
as an argument for buying another Liberty Bond of 
the fourth issue; as a justification for the vehemence 
of the American novelists of the younger generation ; 
and as a reason for the tendency to overstatement in 
the dramatic and literary criticism of New York 
newspapers. We are also under the impression that 
it was used in a debate concerning the propriety of a 
motion picture censorship in New York state. 

Indeed the speaker whom we have in mind never 
failed to use the mule story, no matter what the 
nature of the occasion, unless he substituted the one 
about the man who wanted to go to Seville. He was 
a farmer, this man, and he lived some few miles 
away from Seville in a little ramshackle farm house. 
It had been his ambition of a lifetime to go to Seville 
and upon one particular morning he came out of the 
house carrying a suitcase. 

"Where are you going?" asked his wife. 
118 



WE HAVE WITH US 



"To Seville," replied the farmer. 

His wife was a very pious woman and she added 
by way of correction, "You mean, God willing." 

"No," objected the farmer, dogmatically, "I mean 
I'm going to Seville." 

Now Heaven was angered by this impiety and the 
dogmatic farmer was immediately transformed into 
a frog. Before the very eyes of his wife he lost his 
mortal form and hopped with a great splash into the 
big pond behind the house. To that pond the good 
woman went every day for a year and prayed that 
her husband should be restored to his natural form. 
On the first morning of the second year the big frog 
began to grow bigger and bigger and suddenly he 
was no longer a frog but a man. Out of the pond he 
leaped and ran straightaway into the house. He 
came out carrying a suitcase. 

"Where are you going?" exclaimed the startled 
wife. 

"To Seville," said the farmer. 

"You mean," his wife implored in abject terror, 
"God willing." 

"No," answered the farmer, "to Seville or back to 
the frog pond!" 

The young man of whom we are writing first heard 
the story from Major General Robert Lee Bullard in 
a training school in Lyons. The doughty warrior 
told it in reply to the question, "What is this offensive 
spirit of which you've been telling us?" But with 
a sea change the story took up many other and varied 
roles. It served as the climax of an eloquent speech 
in favor of the release of political prisoners ; it began 

119 



PIECES OF HATE 

an address urging greater originality upon the dram- 
atists of America and it was conscripted at a luncheon 
to Hughie Jennings to explain the speaker's inter- 
pretation of the fundamental reason for the victory 
of the New York Giants over the Yankees in the 
world's series of last season. 

Speaking of baseball, a great football coach once 
said that he could develop a championship eleven 
any time at all out of good material and seven simple 
plays well learned. Likewise, an after-dinner speaker 
can manage tolerably well with a limited supply of 
stories, if only they are elastic enough in interpreta- 
tion and he covers a sufficiently wide range of terri- 
tory in his dining rambles. 

It is our experience that the most inveterate story 
tellers among public speakers are ministers. Un- 
fortunately, the average clergyman has a tendency to 
select tales a little rowdy in an effort to set himself 
down among his listeners as a fellow member in good 
standing of the fraternity of Adam. Still more un- 
fortunately the ministerial speaker often attempts to 
modify and deodorize the anecdote a little and, on 
top of that, gets it just a little wrong. No matter who 
the narrator may be, nothing is quite so ghastly as 
the improper story when told to an audience of more 
than ten or eleven listeners. Even more than a poetic 
drama a purple story needs a group, small and select. 
Any one interested in preserving impropriety might 
very well endow a chain of thimble theaters with a 
maximum seating capacity of ten. Some such step 
is needed or the off color yarn will disappear entirely 
from American life. It was nurtured upon big mir- 

120 



WE HAVE WITH US- 



rors and brass rails and, these being lacking, there 
is no proper atmosphere in which it may suitably be 
reared. Most certainly the anecdote of doubtful 
character does not belong to large banquets even of 
visiting Elks. Literature of this sort is fragile. It 
represents what the Freudians call an escape, and the 
most brazen of us is a little shamefaced about taking 
off his inhibitions in front of a hundred people, 
mostly strangers. 

There must be something wrong with after-dinner 
speaking because it is notoriously the lowest form of 
American oratory. It if were not for Chauncey M. 
Depew whole generations in this country would have 
been born and lived and died without once having 
any memory worth preserving after the demitasse. 
The trouble, we think, is that dinner guests are much 
too friendly. It is the custom that the man at the 
speakers' table may not be heckled. He is privileged 
and privilege has made him dull. According to our 
observation there is never anything of interest said 
with the laying of cornerstones or the dedication of 
new high school buildings. On the other hand, we 
have frequently been amused and excited by tilts at 
political conventions and mass meetings. 

William Jennings Bryan is among the prize bores 
of the world when he gets up to do his canned mate- 
rial about The Prince of Peace, but no sensitive soul 
can fail to admire this same Commoner if he has 
ever .had the privilege of hearing him talk down 
political foes upon the floor of a convention. All the 
labored tricks of oratory are forgotten then. Give 
Mr. Bryan some one at whom he may with propriety 

121 



PIECES OF HATE 

shake a finger and he becomes direct, vivid and 
moving. 

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt was a speaker of 
somewhat the same type. He did not talk well unless 
there was some living and present person for him to 
speak against. Upon one occasion we heard him 
make a particularly dreary discourse, and inci- 
dentally a political one, until he came to a point 
where a group in the audience took exception to some 
statement and attempted to howl him down. It was 
like the touch of a whip on the flanks of a stake horse. 
Roosevelt returned to the statement and said it over 
again, only this time he said it much more dogmat- 
ically and twice as well. Before that speech was done 
he had climbed to the top of a table and was putting 
all his back and shoulders into every word. Even 
his platitudes seemed to be knockout blows. He was 
inspiring. He was magnificent. 

The after-dinner speaker needs this same stimulus 
of emotion. He ought to have something into which 
he can get his teeth. Every well conducted banquet 
should include a special committee to heckle the 
guests of honor. Even a dreary person might be 
aroused to fervor if his opening sentence was met 
with a mocking roar of, "Is that so!" Loud cries of 
"Make him sit down" would undoubtedly serve to 
make the speaker forget his entire stock of anecdotes 
about Pat and Mike. There would be no calm in 
which he could be reminded of anything except that 
certain desperadoes were not willing to listen, and 
that, by the Old Harry, he was going to give it to 
them so hot and heavy that they would have to. 

122 



WE HAVE WITH US- 



The scheme may sound a little cruel, but we ought 
to face the fact that a time has come when we must 
choose between cutting off the heads of our after- 
dinner speakers or slapping them in the face. We 
believe that they deserve to have a chance to show us 
whether or not they have a right to live. 



125 



XXV 

THE YOUNG PESSIMISTS 

Bert Williams used to tell a story about a man on 
a lonely road at night who suddenly saw a ghost 
come out of the forest and begin to follow him. The 
man walked faster and the ghost increased his pace. 
Then the man broke into a run with the ghost right on 
his heels. Mile after mile, faster and faster, they 
went until at last the man dropped at the side of the 
road exhausted. The ghost perched beside him on a 
large rock and boomed, "That was quite a run we 
had." "Yes" gasped the man, "and as soon as I get 
my breath we're going to have another one." 

Our young American pessimists see man at the 
moment he drops beside the road, and without fur- 
ther investigation decide that it is all up with him. 
To be sure, they may not be very far wrong in the 
ultimate fate of man, but at least they anticipate his 
end. They do not stick with him until the finish; 
and this second-wind flight, however useless, is some- 
thing so characteristic of life that it belongs in the 
record. I have at least a sneaking suspicion that 
now and again there happens along a runner so 
staunch and courageous that he keeps up the fight 
until cock-crow and thus escapes all the apparitions 
which would overthrow him. Of course, it is a long 

124 



THE YOUNG PESSIMISTS 

shot and the young pessimists are much too logical 
to wait for such miraculous chances. As a matter of 
fact, they don't call themselves pessimists, but prefer 
to be known as rationalists, realists, or some 
such name which carries with it the hint of 
wisdom. 

And they are wise up to the very point of believing 
only the things they have seen. However, I am not 
sure they are quite so wise when they go a notch 
beyond this and assert roundly that everything which 
they have seen is true. For my own part I don't be- 
lieve that white rabbits are actually born in high 
hats. The truth is quicker than the eye, but it is 
hardly possible to make any person with fresh young 
sight believe that. Question the validity of some 
character in a play or book by a young rationalist 
and he will invariably reply, "Why she lived right in 
our town," and he will upon request supply name, 
address, and telephone number to confound the 
doubters. 

"Let the captious be sure they know their Emmas 
as well as I do before they tell me how she would 
act," wrote Eugene O'Neill when somebody objected 
that the heroine of "DifPrent" was not true. This, of 
course, shifts the scope of the inquiry to the question, 
"How well does O'Neill know his Emmas?" Indeed, 
how well does any bitter-end rationalist know any- 
body? Once upon a time we lived in a simple age 
in which when a man said, "I'm going to kick you 
downstairs because I don't like you," and then did 
it, there was not a shadow of doubt in the mind of 
the person at the foot of the stairs that he had come 

125 



PIECES OF HATE 

upon an enemy. All that is changed now. During 
the war, for instance, George Sylvester Viereck wrote 
a book to prove that every time Roosevelt said, 
"Viereck is an undesirable citizen," or words to that 
effect, he was simply dissembling an admiration so 
great that it was shot through and through with 
ambivalent outbursts of hatred. Mr. Viereck may 
not have proved his case, but he did, at least, put his 
relations into debatable ground by shifting from 
Philip conscious to Philip subconscious. 

In the new world of the psychoanalysts there is 
confusion for the rationalist even though he is deal- 
ing with something so inferentially logical as a sci- 
ence. For here, with all its tangible symbols, is a 
science which deals with things which cannot be seen 
or heard or touched. And much of all the truth in 
the world lies in just such dim dominions. The 
pessimist is very apt to be stopped at the border. 
For years he has reproached the optimist with the 
charge that he lived by dreams rather than realities. 
Now, wise men have come forward to say that the 
key to all the most important things in life lies in 
dreams. Of course, the poets have known that for 
years, but nobody paid any attention to them because 
they only felt it and offered no papers to the medical 
journals. 

It would be unfair to suggest that no dreamer is 
a pessimist. The most prolific period of pessimism 
comes at twenty-one, or thereabouts, when the first 
attempt is made to translate dreams into reality, an 
attempt by a person not over-skillful in either lan- 
guage. Often it is made in college where a new 

126 



THE YOUNG PESSIMISTS 

freedom inspires a somewhat sudden and wholesale 
attempt to put every vision to the test. Along about 
this time the young man finds that the romanticists 
have lied to him about love and he bounces all the 
way back to Strindberg. Maybe he gets drunk for 
the first time and learns that every English author 
from Shakespeare to Dickens has vastly overrrated it 
for literary effect. He follows the formulae of Fal- 
staff and instead of achieving a roaring joviality he 
goes to sleep. Personally tobacco sent me into a deep 
pessimism when I first took it up in a serious way. 
Huck's corncob pipe had always seemed to me one 
of the most persuasive symbols of true enjoyment. 
It seemed to me that life could hold nothing more 
ideal than to float down the Mississippi blowing 
rings. After six months of experimenting I was 
ready to believe that maybe the Mississippi wasn't 
so much either. Romance seemed pretty doubtful 
stuff. Around this time, also, the young man gen- 
erally discovers, in compulsory chapel, that the aver- 
age minister is a dull preacher; and of course that 
knocks all the theories of the immortality of the soul 
right on the head. He may even have come to col- 
lege with a thirst for knowledge and a faith in its 
exciting quality, only to have these emotions ooze 
away during the second month of introductory lec- 
tures on anthropology. 

Accordingly, it is not surprising to find F. Scott 
Fitzgerald's Amory Blaine looking at the towers of 
Princeton and musing: 

Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learn- 
ing the old creeds through a revery of long days and 

127 



PIECES OF HATE 

nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray tur- 
moil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated 
more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship 
of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought; 
all faiths in man shaken. . . . 

Nobody wrote as well as that in Copeland's course 
at Harvard but there was a pretty general agreement 
that life — or rather Life — was a sham and a delu- 
sion. This was expressed in poems lamenting the 
fact that the oceans and the mountains were going to 
go on and that the writer wouldn't. 

Generally he didn't give the oceans or the moun- 
tains very long either. All the short stories were 
about murder and madness. We cut our patterns 
into very definite conclusions because we were pessi- 
mists and sure of ourselves. It was the most logical 
of philosophies and disposed of all loose ends. One 
of my pieces (to polish off a theme on the futility of 
human wishes) was about a man who went stark 
raving, and Copeland sat in his chair and groaned 
and moaned, which was his substitute for making 
little marks in red ink. He had been reading Sheri- 
dan's "The Critic" to the class with the scene in which 
the two faithless Spanish lovers and the two nieces 
and the two uncles all try to kill each other at the 
same time, and are thus thrown into the most terrific 
stalemate until the author's ingenious contrivance of 
a beefeater who cries, "Drop your weapons in the 
Queen's name." At any rate when I had finished the 
little man ceased groaning and shook his head about 
my story of the man who went mad. "Broun," he 
said, "try to solve your problems without recourse to 

128 



THE YOUNG PESSIMISTS 

death, madness — or any other beefeater in the 
Queen's name." 

And it seems to me that the young pessimists, 
generally speaking, have allowed themselves to be 
bound in a formula as tight as that which ever 
afflicted any Polly anna. It isn't the somberness with 
which they imbue life which arouses our protest, so 
much as the regularity. They paint life not only as 
a fake fight in which only one result is possible, but 
they make it again and again the selfsame fight. 



129 



XXVI 

GLASS SLIPPERS BY THE GROSS 

When Cinderella sat in the ashes she should have 
consoled herself with the thought of the motion- 
picture rights. No young woman of our time has 
had her adventures so ceaselessly celebrated in film 
and drama. Of course, she generally goes by some 
other name. It might be "Miss Lulu Bett," for 
instance. 

For our part, we must confess that much as we like 
Zona Gale's modern and middle-western version of 
the old tale, Cinderella is beginning to lose favor 
with us. Her appeal in the first place rested on the 
fact that she was abused and neglected, but by this 
time the ashes have become the skimpiest sort of 
interlude. You just know that the fairy godmother 
is waiting in the wings, and you can hear the great 
coach honking around the corner. Undoubtedly, the 
order for the glass slippers was placed months in 
advance. More than likely it called for a gross, since 
there are ever so many Cinderella feet to fit these 
days — what with Peg and Kiki and Sally and Irene 
and all the authentic members of the family. In- 
deed, for a time, Cinderella was spreading herself 
around so lavishly in dramatic fiction that one sex 
was not enough to contain her, and we had a Cin- 

130 



GLASS SLIPPERS BY THE GROSS 

derella Man. All the usual perquisites were his 
except the glass slipper. 

And now the time has come when the original 
poetic justice due to the miss by the kitchen stove 
has quite worn off. Cinderella has been paid in full, 
but how about her two ugly sisters? They have gone 
down the ages without honor or rewards. Each time 
their aspirations are blighted. Although eminently 
conscientious in fulfilling their social duties, it has 
availed them nothing. We are determined not to 
welcome the story again until it appears in a revised 
form. In the version which we favor, Prince Charm- 
ing will try the glass slipper upon Cinderella, and 
then turn away without enthusiasm, remarking in 
cutting manner, "It is not a fit. Your foot is much 
too small." One of the ugly sisters will be sitting 
somewhat timidly in the background, and it will be 
to her the Prince will turn, exclaiming rapturously: 
"A perfect number nine!" 

And they lived happily ever after. 

And while we are about it, a good many of the 
fairy stories can stand revision. This Jack the Giant 
Killer has been permitted to go to outrageous lengths. 
Between him and David, and a few others, the impres- 
sion has been spread broadcast that any large person 
is a perfect setup for the first valiant little man who 
chooses to assail him with sword or sling. We pur- 
pose organizing the Six Foot League to combat this 
hostile propaganda. Elephants will be admitted, 
too, on account of the unjust canard concerning their 
fear of mice. We and the elephants do not intend 
to go on through life taking all sorts of nonsense 

131 



PIECES OF HATE 

from whippersnappers. The success of Jack and all 
the other little men of legend has undoubtedly been 
due to the chivalry of the big and strong. Dragons 
have died cheerfully rather than take a mean advan- 
tage and slay pestiferous and belligerent runts by 
spitting out a little fire. Why doesn't somebody 
celebrate the heroism of these miscalled monsters 
who have gone down with full steam in their boilers 
because they were unwilling even to guard themselves 
against foemen so palpably out of their class? 

Take St. George, for instance. Do you imagine 
for a minute that his victory was honestly and fairly 
earned? British pluck and all the rest of it had 
nothing to do with it. The dragon could have finished 
him off in a second, but the huge and kindly animal 
was afflicted with an acute sense of humor. Between 
paroxysms it is known to have remarked: "I shall 
certainly die laughing." It could not resist the sight 
of St. George swaggering up to the attack in full 
armor like an infuriated Ford charging the Wool- 
worth Building. And the strangest part of it all is 
that the dragon did die laughing just as it had pre- 
dicted. St. George flung his sword exactly between 
a "ha" and a "ha." The tiny bit of steel lodged in 
the windpipe like a fishbone, and before medical 
assistance could be summoned the dragon was dead. 
Of course it was clever, but we should hardly call it 
cricket. All the triumphs of the little men are of 
much the same sort. Honest, slam-bang, line play 
has never entered into their scheme of things. Their 
reputation rests on fakes and forward passes. 

Then there was the wolf and Little Red Riding- 
132 



GLASS SLIPPERS BY THE GROSS 

Hood. The general impression seems to be that the 
child's grandmother was a saintly old lady and that 
the wolf was a beast. Let us dismiss this sentimental 
conception and consider the facts squarely. Before 
meeting the wolf Red Riding-Hood was the usual 
empty-headed flapper. She knew nothing of the 
world. So flagrant was her innocence that it consti- 
tuted a positive menace to the community. The wolf 
changed all that. It gave Red Riding-Hood a good 
scare and opened her eyes. After that encounter 
nobody ever fooled Red Riding-Hood much. She 
positively abandoned her practice of wandering 
around into cottages on the assumption that if there 
was anybody in bed it must be her grandmother. 

The familiar story, somehow or other, has omitted 
to say that Miss Hood eventually married the richest 
man in the village. Perhaps the old narrator did not 
want to reveal the fact that on top of the what-not in 
the palatial home there stood a silver frame, and 
upon the picture in the frame was written: "What- 
ever measure of success I may have attained I owe to 
you — Red Riding-Hood." And whose picture do 
you suppose it was? Her grandmother? No. Her 
husband? Oh, no, indeed! It was the wolf. 



133 



XXVII 

A MODERN BEANSTALK 

The legends of the world have been devised by 
timorous people. They represent the desire of man, 
sloshing around in a world much too big for him, 
to keep up his courage by whistling. He has pre- 
tended through these tales that champions of his own 
kind would spring up to protect him. "Let St. George 
do it," was a well known motto in the days of old. 

And we must insist again that such tales are false 
and pernicious stimulants for the young. We intend 
to tell H. 3d that when Jack climbed up the bean- 
stalk the giant flicked him off with one finger. We 
want the child to have some respect for size and 
to associate it with authority. Otherwise we don't 
see how we can possibly prevail upon him to pay 
any attention when we say, "Stop that." If he goes 
on with these fairy stories he will merely measure 
us coolly for a slingshot. 

As a matter of fact, he doesn't pay any attention 
now. The time for propaganda is already here. In 
our stories the ogre is going to receive his due. Of 
course, we will add a moral. It would be wrong to 
lead the boy to believe that brute force is the only 
effective power in the world. Now and then a giant 
will be killed, but it will not be any easy victory 

134 



A MODERN BEANSTALK 

for one presumptuous champion with a magic sword. 
Instead we will explain that little Jack was not killed 
when the giant flipped him off the beanstalk. The 
huge finger struck him only a glancing blow. Never- 
theless, it took Jack a good many days to get well 
again. It was a fine lesson for him. During his 
convalescence (naturally we will have to think up a 
shorter word) he did a lot of thinking. As soon as 
he was up and around he scoured the country for 
other boys and at last he managed to recruit a band 
of fifty. The first dark night Jack climbed the bean- 
stalk again, but he took along the fifty. By a pre- 
arranged plan they fell upon the giant from all sides 
and managed to bear him down and kill him. We 
certainly are not going to admit that a giant can be 
opened by anything less than Jacks or better. 

Following the account of the death of the giant 
will come the moral. We will explain that Jack is 
small and weak and that there are great and mon- 
strous powers in the world which are too strong for 
him. But he need not wait for the superman or the 
magic lamp or anything like that. He must make 
common cause with his kind. At this point we shall 
probably digress for a while to go into a brief but 
adequate exposition of the League of Nations, munici- 
pal ownership, profit sharing and the single tax. 

Dropping the serious side of the discussion, we 
shall add that even a great broth of a man can be 
spoiled by too many cooks. There is no power in 
the world great enough to resist the will of man if 
only he moves against it valiantly — and in numbers. 

Maybe H. 3d will not like our version of "Jack 
135 



PIECES OF HATE 

and the Beanstalk" half as well as the original. But 
we fear that when he grows up he is going to find 
that there are still dragons and ogres and assorted 
monsters roaming the world. We want him to be in- 
strumental in killing them. We don't want him to 
get clawed by going forward in foolishly overconfi- 
dent forays. 

There is the Tammany Tiger, for instance. Here 
and there a brave young fellow rises up and says, 
"I'm going to kill the Tiger." Having read the fairy 
stories, he thinks that the thing can be done by a 
little courage mixed with magic. He paints RE- 
FORM on a banner, charges ahead before anybody 
but the Tiger is ready and gets chewed up. 

This is sentimentally appealing, but it has been 
a singularly useless system of ridding the city of the 
Tiger. I want H. 3d to know better and to act not 
only more wisely but more successfully. Somewhere 
in the story I plan to work in a paraphrase of some- 
thing Emerson once said. Jack's last words to his 
army just before climbing the beanstalk will be, "If 
you strike a giant you must kill him." 



136 



XXVIII 

VOLSTEAD AND CONVERSATION 

There is one argument in favor of Prohibition. It 
certainly helps to make conversation on a railroad 
train. In the years before Volstead we had ridden 
thousands of miles silently peering at the two stran- 
gers across the smoking compartment and wondering 
how to get them talking. The weather is overrated 
as a common starting point. It dies after a sentence. 

Now we have a sure method. Begin with, "Well, 
this is certainly just the day for a little shot of some- 
thing," and you will find enough conversation on 
hand to carry you across the continent. Indeed, 
nothing but an ocean can stop it. 

Some day, of course, we are going to run into a 
stranger who will reply, "Prohibition is now the 
national law of our land and I want you to know, sir, 
that I intend to respect it." 

This has never happened yet. It makes us wonder 
how the drys get from point to point. Either they 
stay at home, abstain from smoking or betray their 
cause for the sake of friendliness. During two years 
of frequent travel we have never yet met an advocate 
of Prohibition in a smoking compartment. 

There was nothing but the most fiery opposition on 
the part of the man who was going to Rochester. 

137 



PIECES OF HATE 

"It's making criminals out of us," he declared 
severely but with an ill concealed joy at the thought 
of being at last, in ripe middle age, a law-breaker. 
He carried us into Albany with tales of men who 
"never touched a drop until they went and passed 
that there law." All these belated roisterers he pic- 
tured as reeling in and out of his office under the 
visible effects of illegal stimulation. He sought to 
create the impression that he thought the condition 
terrible, but evidently it had contributed a new and 
exciting factor to the wholesale fruit business. Even 
the pre- Volstead drinkers he seeemed to find not un- 
worthy of his concern. All of them used to take just 
one and stop. Now his life was beset with roaring 
graybeards. 

Leaving Albany, the young man in the check suit 
took up the talk and began a vivid account of recent 
experiences in Malone, N. Y., which he identified as 
the strategic point in bootlegging activities. Opening 
on a note of pathos, in which he wrung the hearts of 
his hearers by recounting the amazingly low price of 
Scotch near the border, he introduced a merrier mood 
by relating a conversation between two farmers of 
the section which he had overheard. 

"What style of car have you got?" asked one of 
the men in the allegedly veracious anecdote. 

"Twenty cases," replied the other laconically. 

According to the estimate of the narrator, a boot- 
legger passes through Malone every eight minutes. 
He saw one take a turn into Main Street careening 
along at fifty miles an hour and skid so dangerously 
that the auto tipped, throwing a case of whiskey clear 

138 



VOLSTEAD AND CONVERSATION 

across the road. "He went out of town making 
seventy," added the story teller. 

Invariably the bootlegger was the hero of his tales. 
These modern Robin Hoods he pictured as little 
brothers to all the world except the revenue officers. 
Once two revenooers caught one of the gallant com- 
pany and were about to proceed with him to Syra- 
cuse, toting along four telltale barrels of rye. But 
they had gone only a short distance on their journey 
when they were overtaken by two men in a motor 
truck escorting a prisoner, heavily manacled, and 
ten barrels of whiskey. After a short confab they 
agreed to relieve the revenuers of their prisoner and 
deliver both miscreants to the proper authorities in 
Syracuse. The gullible agents of the law gave up 
their man. 

"And," continued the rum romancer, "they never 
did show up at Syracuse at all. That second crowd 
they weren't revenue men at all. They were boot- 
leggers." 

Indeed, the young man declared that in Northern 
New York there is a well organized Bootleggers' 
Union, which pays all fines out of a common fund. 
So great was his seeming admiration for the rum 
runners that we suspected him of being himself a 
member in good standing, but soon we were moved 
to identify him as a participant in a trade still 
more sinister. An acquaintance came past the 
green curtain and inquired eagerly, "Did you sell 
her?" 

"Twice," said the young man enthusiastically and 
without regard to our look of horror as we were 

139 



PIECES OF HATE 

moved by circumstantial evidence to believe him not 
only a white slaver but a dishonest one. 

"Yes," he continued. "I had my work cut out. 
You see he doesn't like Nazimova." 

We were a little sorry to find that the young man 
was a motion picture salesman. It made us fear that 
perhaps some of his bootlegging yarns had been 
colored with the ready fiction of his business. Still 
it was interesting to sit and learn that Niagara Falls 
got "Camille" for only $300. 

The middle-aged man, the one with the large 
acquaintance among belated drunkards, seemingly 
had little interest when the conversation turned from 
bootlegging to the silver screen. We never did hear 
what business "The Sheik" did in Albany because he 
was roaring at a skeptic about cabbage. 

"I tell you," he shouted, "they got 110 tons off of 
every acre." 

Now we yield to no man in love of cabbage, but 
we should not find such quantities appealing. It 
would compel corn beef commitments beyond the 
point of comfort. 

The skeptic made some timid observation about 
onions. We did not catch whether it was for or 
against. 

"Do you know," said the cabbage king, "that 75 
per cent, of all the onions in America are eaten by 
Jews?" He said it with rancor, whether racial or 
vegetable we could not determine. To us it seemed 
an unusual tribute to an ancient people. No other 
story of their executive capacity had ever seemed to 
us quite so convincing. We marveled at the extraor- 

140 



VOLSTEAD AND CONVERSATION 

dinary cooperation which could hold a habit so pre- 
cisely to an average easy to compute and remember. 

We were also moved to admiration for the census 
takers. Statistics seem to us man's supreme triumph 
in solving the mysteries of a chaotic world. Crea- 
tion, of course, was divine, but even that did not 
involve bookkeeping. 

For a time we considered abandoning our project 
to write a novel about a newspaper man and his son 
and make it, instead, a pastoral about a hero simple 
and sincere whose life was dedicated to the task of 
determining the ultimate destination of every onion 
raised in America. Then, since art ought to be inter- 
national, we planned to widen the scope of the tale 
and include Bermuda. This would enable us to 
develop a tropical love interest and get a sex appeal 
into the story. We are not sure that a book would 
have a wide sale on onions alone. 

Of course other vegetables might enter the story. 
There could be a villain forever tempting the hero to 
abandon his career and go after parsnips. Titles 
simply flooded our mind. We thought of "Desperate 
Steaks," "Out of the Frying Pan" and "A Bed of 
Onions," although we had a vague impression that 
W. L. George had done something of this sort in one 
of his earlier novels. "Breath Control" we dismissed 
as too frivolous. "Smothered" was too sensa- 
tional. 

Eventually we abandoned the whole project. We 
feared that we might not be up to the atmosphere of 
an onion novel. 

Still, the advertising might be very effective if the 
141 



PIECES OF HATE 

publisher could be induced to bill the book under a 
great, flaring headline, "The Onion Forever." 

But the train of thought was cut short when the 
demon vegetable statistician got up and said, "If I 
could have just one wish in the world, I'd choose a 
fruit farm between here and Lockport," Looking up 
to see where "here" was, we observed the Rochester 
station. The trip had seemed but a moment, and all 
because of Prohibition. 

By the way, did you know that 14.72 per cent, of 
all the potatoes raised in America come from Maine? 



142 



XXIX 

LIFE, THE COPY CAT 

Every evening when dusk comes in the Far West, 
little groups of men may be observed leaving the 
various ranch houses and setting out on horseback 
for the moving picture shows. They are cowboys 
and they are intent on seeing Bill Hart in Western 
stuff. They want to be taken out of the dull and 
dreary routine of the world in which they live. 

But somehow or other the films simply cannot get 
very far away from life, no matter how hard or how 
fantastically they try. As we have suggested, the cow- 
boy who struts across the screen has no counterpart 
in real life, but imitation is sure to bridge the gap. 
Young men from the cattle country, after much gaz- 
ing at Hart, will begin to be like him. The styles 
which the cowboys are to wear next year will be 
dictated this fall in Hollywood. 

It has generally been recognized that life has a 
trick of taking color from literature. Once there 
were no flappers and then F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote 
"This Side of Paradise" and created them in shoals. 
Germany had a fearful time after the publication 
of Goethe's "Werther" because striplings began to 
contract the habit of suicide through the influence of 
the book and went about dying all over the place. 

143 



PIECES OF HATE 

And all Scandinavia echoed with slamming doors for 
years just because Ibsen sent Nora out into the night. 
In fact the lock on that door has never worked very- 
well since. When "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was written 
things came to such a pass that a bloodhound couldn't 
see a cake of ice without jumping on it and beginning 
to bay. 

If authors and dramatists can do so much with 
their limited public, think of the potential power of 
the maker of films, who has his tens of thousands to 
every single serf of the writing man. The films can 
make us a new people and we rather think they are 
doing it. Fifteen years ago Americans were con- 
temptuous of all Latin races because of their habit 
of talking with gestures. It was considered the part 
of patriotic dignity to stand with your hands in your 
pockets and to leave all expression, if any, to the 
voice alone. 

Watch an excited American to-day and you will 
find his gestures as sweeping as those of any French- 
man. As soon as he is jarred in the slightest degree 
out of calm he immediately begins to follow sub- 
conscious promptings and behave like his favorite 
motion picture actor. Nor does the resemblance 
end necessarily with mere externals. Hiram John- 
son, the senator from California, is reported to be the 
most inveterate movie fan in America, and it is said 
that he never takes action on a public question with- 
out first asking himself, "What would Mary Pickford 
do under similar circumstances?" In other words 
the senator's position on the proposal to increase the 
import tax on nitrates may be traced directly to the 

144 



LIFE, THE COPY CAT 

fact that he spent the previous evening watching "Lit- 
tle Lord Fauntleroy." 

Even the speaking actors, most contemptuous of 
all motion picture critics, are slaves of the screen. 
At an audible drama in a theater the other day we 
happened to see a young actor who had once given 
high promise of achievement in what was then known 
as the legitimate. Eventually he went into motion 
pictures, but now he was back for a short engage- 
ment. We were shocked to observe that he tried to 
express every line he uttered with his features and 
his hands regardless of the fact that he had words to 
help him. He spoke the lines, but they seemed to 
him merely incidental. We mean that when his part 
required him to say, "It is exactly nineteen minutes 
after two," he tried to do it by gestures and facial 
expression. This is a difficult feat, particularly as 
most young players run a little fast or a little slow 
and are rather in need of regulating. When the 
young man left the theater at the close of the perform- 
ance we sought him out and reproached him bitterly 
on the ground of his bad acting. 

"Where do you get that stuff?" we asked. 

"In the movies," he admitted frankly enough. 

There was no dispute concerning facts. We merely 
could not agree on the question of whether or not it 
was true that he had become a terrible actor. Life 
came into the conversation. Something was said by 
somebody (we can't remember which one of us orig- 
inated it) about holding the mirror up to nature. 
The actor maintained that everyday common folk 
talked and acted exactly like characters in the movies 

145 



PIECES OF HATE 

whenever they were stirred by emotion. We made a 
bet and it was to be decided by what we observed in 
an hour's walk. At the southwest corner of Thirty- 
seventh street and Third avenue, we came upon two 
men in an altercation. One had already laid a men- 
acing hand upon the coat collar of the other. We 
crowded close. The smaller man tried to shake him- 
self loose from the grip of his adversary. And he 
said, "Unhand me." He had met the movies and he 
was theirs. 

The discrepancy in size between the two men was 
so great that my actor friend stepped between them 
and asked, "What's all this row about?" The big 
man answered: "He has spoken lightly of a woman's 
name." 

That was enough for us. We paid the bet and 
went away convinced of the truth of the actor's boast 
that the movies have already bent life to their will. 
At first it seemed to us deplorable, but the longer we 
reflected on the matter the more compensations 
crept in. 

Somehow or other we remembered a tale of Kip- 
ling's called "The Finest Story In The World," which 
dealt with a narrow-chested English clerk, who, by 
some freak or other, remembered his past existences. 
There were times when he could tell with extraor- 
dinary vividness his adventures on a Roman galley 
and later on an expedition of the Norsemen to 
America. He told all these things to a writer who 
was going to put them into a book, but before much 
material had been supplied the clerk fell in love with 
a girl in a tobacconist's and suddenly forgot all his 

146 



LIFE, THE COPY CAT 

previous existences. Kipling explained that the lords 
of life and death simply had to step in and close the 
doors of the past as soon as the young man fell in 
love because love-making was once so much more 
glorious than now that we would all be single if only 
we remembered. 

But love-making is likely to have its renaissance 
from now on since the movies have come into our 
lives. Douglas Fairbanks is in a sense the rival of 
every young man in America. And likewise no 
young woman can hope to touch the fancy of a male 
unless she is in some ways more fetching than Mary 
Pickford. In other words, pace has been provided 
for lovers. For ten cents we can watch courtship 
being conducted by experts. The young man who 
has been to the movies will be unable to avail him- 
self of the traditional ineptitude under such circum- 
stances. Once upon a time the manly thing to do 
was mumble and make a botch of it. The movies 
have changed all that. Courtship will come to have 
a technique. A young man will no more think of 
trying to propose without knowing how than he would 
attempt a violin concert without ever having prac- 
ticed. The phantom rivals of the screen will be all 
about him. He must win to himself something of 
their fire and gesture. Love-making is not going to 
be as easy as it once was. Those who have already 
wed before the competition grew so acute should 
consider themselves fortunate. Consider for instance 
the swain who loves a lady who has been brought up 
on the picture plays of Bill Hart. That young man 
who hopes to supplant the shadow idol will have to 

147 



PIECES OF HATE 

be able to shoot Indians at all ranges from four 
hundred yards up, and to ride one hundred thousand 
miles without once forgetting to keep his face to the 
camera. 



148 



XXX 

THE ORTHODOX CHAMPION 

The entire orthodox world owes a debt to Benny 
Leonard. In all the other arts, philosophies, religions 
and what nots conservatism seems to be crumbling be- 
fore the attacks of the radicals. A stylist may gen- 
erally be identified to-day by his bloody nose. Even 
in Leonard's profession of pugilism the correct 
method has often been discredited of late. 

It may be remembered that George Bernard Shaw 
announced before "the battle of the century" that 
Carpentier ought to be a fifty to one favorite in the 
betting. It was the technique of the Frenchman which 
blinded Shaw to the truth. Every man in the world 
must be in some respect a standpatter. The scope 
of heresy in Shaw stops short of the prize ring. His 
radicalism is not sufficiently far reaching to crawl 
through the ropes. When Carpentier knocked out 
Beckett with one perfectly delivered punch he also 
jarred Shaw. He knocked him loose from some of 
his cynical contempt for the conventions. Mr. Shaw 
might continue to be in revolt against the well-made 
play, but he surrendered his heart wholly to the prop- 
erly executed punch. 

But Carpentier, the stylist, fell before Dempsey, 
149 



PIECES OF HATE 

the mauler, in spite of the support of the intellectuals. 
It seemed once again that all the rules were wrong. 
Benny Leonard remains the white hope of the ortho- 
dox. In lightweight circles, at any rate, old-fashioned 
proprieties are still effective. No performer in any 
art has ever been more correct than Leonard. He 
follows closely all the best traditions of the past. 
His left hand jab could stand without revision in 
any textbook. The manner in which he feints, ducks, 
sidesteps and hooks is unimpeachable. The crouch 
contributed by some of the modernists is not in the 
repertoire of Leonard. He stands up straight like a 
gentleman and a champion and is always ready to hit 
with either hand. 

His fight with Rocky Kansas at Madison Square 
Garden was advertised as being for the lightweight 
championship of the world. As a matter of fact much 
more than that was at stake. Spiritually, Saint- 
Saens, Brander Matthews, Henry Arthur Jones, 
Kenyon Cox, and Henry Cabot Lodge were in Benny 
Leonard's corner. His defeat would, by implication, 
have given support to dissonance, dadaism, creative 
evolution and bolshevism. Rocky Kansas does noth- 
ing according to rule. His fighting style is as form- 
less as the prose of Gertrude Stein. One finds a de- 
lightfully impromptu quality in Rocky's boxing. 
Most of the blows which he tries are experimental. 
There is no particular target. Like the young poet 
who shot an arrow into the air, Rocky Kansas tosses 
off a right hand swing every once and so often and 
hopes that it will land on somebody's jaw. 

But with the opening gong Rocky Kansas tore into 
150 



THE ORTHODOX CHAMPION 

Leonard. He was gauche and inaccurate but ter- 
ribly* persistent. The champion jabbed him repeat- 
edly with a straight left which has always been con- 
sidered the proper thing to do under the circum- 
stances. Somehow or other it did not work. Leon- 
ard might as well have been trying to stand off a 
rhinoceros with a feather duster. Kansas kept crowd- 
ing him. In the first clinch Benny's hair was rum- 
pled and a moment later his nose began to bleed. The 
incident was a shock to us. It gave us pause and 
inspired a sneaking suspicion that perhaps there was 
something the matter with Tennyson after all. Here 
were two young men in the ring and one was quite 
correct in everything which he did and the other 
was all wrong. And the wrong one was winning. 
All the enthusiastic Rocky Kansas partisans in the 
gallery began to split infinitives to show their con- 
tempt for Benny Leonard and all other stylists. Ma- 
caulay turned over twice in his grave when Kansas 
began to lead with his right hand. 

But traditions are not to be despised. Form may 
be just as tough in fiber as rebellion. Not all the 
steadfastness of the world belongs to heretics. Even 
though his hair was mussed and his nose bleeding, 
Benny continued faithful to the established order. 
At last his chance came. The young child of nature 
who was challenging for the championship dropped 
his guard and Leonard hooked a powerful and en- 
tirely orthodox blow to the conventional point of the 
jaw. Down went Rocky Kansas. His past life flashed 
before him during the nine seconds in which he re- 
mained on the floor and he wished that he had been 

151 



PIECES OF HATE 

more faithful as a child in heeding the advice of 
his boxing teacher. After all, the old masters did 
know something. There is still a kick in style, and 
tradition carries a nasty wallop. 



152 



XXXI 

WITH A STEIN ON THE TABLE 

Half a League would be better than one. Perhaps 
a quarter section would be still better. The thing 
that sank Mr. Wilson's project, so far as America 
was concerned, was the machinery. It was too heavy. 
Not so much was needed. The only essential thing 
was a large round table and a pleasant room held 
under at least one year's lease. Of course, it should 
have been the right sort of table. If they had put 
knives and forks and, better yet, glasses upon the 
one in Paris, instead of ink and paper, we might 
already have a better world. Beer and light wines 
can settle subjects which defy all the subtleties pos- 
sible to ink. 

What the world needs, then, is not so much a league 
as an international beer night to be held at regular 
intervals by representatives of the nations. Good 
beer and enough of it would have settled the whole 
problem of the covenants which were going to be 
open and did not turn out that way. The little meet- 
ings would have a persuasive privacy, and yet they 
would not be secret to any destructive extent. An 
alert reporter hanging about the front door could not 
fail to hear the strains of "He's a jolly good fellow" 
drifting down the stairs from the conference room 

153 



PIECES OF HATE 

and, if he were a journalist of any ability, he would 
have no difficulty in surmising that the crowd was 
entertaining the delegate from Germany and dis- 
cussing indemnities. 

Some persons were not quite fair in criticizing the 
shortcomings of President Wilson at Paris. It was 
easy to seize upon "open covenants" and to demolish 
his sincerity by pointing out the secrecy with which 
negotiations were carried on. It is sentimentally 
satisfying to every liberal and radical in the world 
to declare that all the walls should have come down 
and to continue this criticism by suggesting that the 
Arms conference ought to have been taken out of the 
Pan American Building and transferred to Tex Rick- 
ard's arena on Boyle's Thirty Acres, or the Yale Bowl. 
The notion is fascinating because it permits the pos- 
sibility of cheering sections and enables one to pic- 
ture Henry Cabot Lodge leaping to his feet every now 
and again and asking all the men with the R. R. ban- 
ners (Reactionary Republicans) to join him in nine 
long rahs for the freedom of the seas. The dele- 
gates, of course, would be numbered so that the spec- 
tators could tell who was doing the kicking. 

It is appealing and we wish it could be done that 
way, but it is not sound. We all know how bitter and 
destructive are legal battles which have their first 
hearing in the newspapers. We also remember how 
tenacious have been many of the struggles between 
capital and labor just so long as the leaders of either 
side were talking to each other across eight-column 
headlines instead of a table. 

One may counter by calling to mind various evil 
154 



WITH A STEIN ON THE TABLE 

things which have come to the world from the tops 
of tables, but we must insist again upon stressing 
the point that these were not tables which supported 
food and drink. In Paris various points were lost 
to democracy because the supporters of the right were 
outstayed by the champions of evil. In our little club 
room it would be hard to put such pressure upon 
anybody. He would need to do no more than shout 
for the waiter to fill up his mug again and intrench 
himself for the evening. The most attractive thing 
about our suggestion is that though it sounds like 
frivolous foolery it actually is nothing of the sort. 
We are willing to accept modifications, but the scheme 
would work. We have seen the pacifying effects of 
food and drink upon warring factions too many times 
not to respect them. 

Once, at a dinner we heard Max Eastman talk 
across a table to Judge Gary and both enjoyed it. 
We do not mean to suggest that the two men arose 
with all their previous ideas of the conduct of the 
world changed. Judge Gary did not offer, in spite 
of the eloquence of Eastman, to curtail the working 
day in the mills of the United States Steel Company, 
nor did the editor of The Liberator promise that there- 
after he would be more kindly disposed in writing 
about universal military training. But both men were 
disposed to listen. Gary did not rush to the tele- 
phone to summon a Federal attorney, and there was 
no disposition on the part of Eastman to call the pro- 
letariat up into immediate arms. The most friendly 
thing which anybody ever said about Mr. Wilson's 
League of Nations came from those opponents ol the 

155 



PIECES OF HATE 

scheme who called it "nothing but a debating so- 
ciety." 

Talk is lint for the wounds of the world. The 
guns cannot begin until the statesmen have had their 
say. Any device which provides a pleasant place 
and an audience for the orators in power is distinctly 
a move to end war. The trouble with ultimatums is 
not only that they are ugly but that they are short. If 
certain gentlemen from Serbia could have been 
brought face to face with other gentlemen from Aus- 
tria and empowered to thrash it out the dispute be- 
tween the two nations would by no means be settled 
by now, but it would still be in a talking stage. 

Arguments must be fostered and preserved. It 
may be a little tiresome to hear premiers saying, "Is 
that so?" to one another, but the satisfaction derived 
from such exchanges is enough to keep the conflict- 
ing parties from seeking a blood restoration of na- 
tional egos. Food and drink are not only the great- 
est instigators but the best preservers of free speech 
in the world. Undoubtedly everybody in his time 
has heard some toastmaster or other insult a promi- 
nent citizen a few feet away in a manner which 
would be unsafe on the public highway and nothing 
has happened. It has been passed off as something 
wholly suitable to the Occasion. As we listened to 
Max Eastman talk across the table to Judge Gary we 
wondered whether anybody would have even thought 
for a moment of sending Debs to jail if he had only 
had the good fortune to talk from behind a barricade 
of knives and forks. These are the ultimate and most 
effective weapons of all peaceful men. With one 

156 



WITH A STEIN ON THE TABLE 

of each in front of him even a revolutionist may bare 
his heart and still be safe from the bayonets of the 
military. 

Of course, the value of the weapons is not unknown 
to the conservatives as well. Many a rampant re- 
former has gone to Washington and has seen his 
ideals drown one by one before his eyes in the soup. 
For years England managed to muddle along with 
Ireland by inviting nationalists out to dinner. With 
the spread and development of civilization the price 
of pottage has gone up. To-day we can afford to 
laugh at poor ignorant and deluded Jacob who let 
his pottage go for a mess of birthright. 

In the light of these admissions it would be im- 
possible to contend that all the ills of the world 
could be solved by the device of international beer 
nights. Even well fed men are not perfect. Alcohol 
is benign, but it does not canonize. Schemes would 
go on even over demitasses. There would be strata- 
gems and surprises. And yet to our mind the strata- 
gem, even of a statesman, can never be so potent for 
harm in the world as the stratagem of a general. 
Diplomacy is an evil game, chiefly because it has 
been so exclusive. Our little club would be large 
enough to admit all the delegates of the world. The 
only house rule would be "No checks cashed." 

We have no idea that the heart of man is not more 
important than his stomach. The world will not be 
made over more closely to the heart's desire until 
we are of a better breed. But while we are waiting, 
friendly talks about a table may count for something. 
We might manage to swap a groaning world for a 

157 



PIECES OF HATE 

groaning board. There is sanction for hope in the 
words of the song. We know, don't we, that it's al- 
ways fair weather when good fellows get together with 
a stein on the table. All America needs, then, to 
make the world safer for democracy is the stein and 
the good fellows. 



158 



XXXII 

ART FOR ARGUMENT'S SAKE 

All editors are divided into two parts. In one 
group are those who think that anybody who can 
make a good bomb can undoubtedly fashion a great 
sonnet. The members of the other class believe that 
if a man loves his country he is necessarily well 
fitted to be a book reviewer. 

As a matter of fact, new terminology is coming 
into the business of criticism. A few years ago the 
critic who was displeased with a book called it "sen- 
sational" or "sentimental" or something like that. 
To-day he would voice his disapproval by writing 
"Pro-German" or "Bolshevist." Authors are no 
longer evaluated in terms of aesthetics, but rather from 
the point of view of political economy. Indeed, to- 
day we have hardly such a thing as good writers and 
bad writers. They have become instead either 
"sound" or "dangerous." A sound author is one 
with whose views you are in agreement. 

So tightly are the lines drawn that the criticism 
of the leading members of each side can be accurately 
predicted in advance. Show me the cover of a war 
novel, and let me observe that it is called "The Great 
Folly," and I will guarantee to foreshadow with a 
high degree of accuracy just what the critic of The 
New York Times will say about it and also the critic 

159 



PIECES OF HATE 

of The Liberator. Even if it happened to be called 
"The Glory of Shrapnel," the guessing would be just 
as easy. 

The manner in which anybody says anything now 
whether in prose, verse, music or painting is entirely 
secondary in the minds of all critical publications. 
Reviewers look for motives. Symphonies are dis- 
missed as seditious, and lyrics are closely scanned to 
see whether or not their rhythms are calculated to 
upset the established order without due recourse to 
the ballot. Nor has this particular reviewer any in- 
tention of suggesting that such activity is entirely vain 
and fanciful. He remembers that only a month ago 
he began a thrilling adventure story called "The Lost 
Peach Pit," only to discover, when he was half 
through, that it was a tract in favor of a higher import 
duty on potash. 

A vivid novel about the war by John Dos Passos 
has been issued under the title "Three Soldiers." 
One of the chief characters was a creative musician 
who broke under the rigor of army discipline which 
was repugnant to him. Nobody who wrote about the 
book undertook to discuss whether or not the author 
had painted a persuasive picture of the struggle in 
the soul of a credible man. Instead they argued as 
to just what proportion of men in the American army 
were discontented, and the final critical verdict is 
being withheld until statistics are available as to how 
many of them were musicians. Those who disliked 
the book did not speak of Mr. Dos Passos as either 
a realist or a romanticist. They simply called him a 
traitor and let it go at that. The enthusiasts on the 

160 



ART FOR ARGUMENT'S SAKE 

other side neglected to say anything about his style 
because they needed the space to suggest that he ought 
to be the next candidate for president from the So- 
cialist party. 

Speaking as a native-born American (Brooklyn — 
1888) who once voted for a Socialist for member- 
ship in the Board of Aldermen, the writer must ad- 
mit that he has found the radical solidarity of critical 
approval or dissent more trying than that of the con- 
servatives. Again and again he has found, in The 
Liberator and elsewhere, able young men, who ought 
to know better, praising novels for no reason on 
earth except that they were radical. If the novelist 
said that life in a middlewestern town was dreary and 
evil he was bound to be praised by the socialist re- 
viewers. On the other hand, any author who found 
in this same middle west a community or an indi- 
vidual not hopelessly stunted in mind and in morals, 
was immediately scourged as a viciously sentimental 
observer who had probably been one of the group 
which fixed upon the nomination of President Hard- 
ing late at night behind the locked doors of a little 
room in a big hotel. 

The enthusiasm of the radical critics extends not 
only to rebels against existing governmental prin- 
ciples and moral conventions, but to all those who 
dare to write in any new manner. There seems to 
be a certain confusion whereby free verse is held to 
be a movement in the direction of free speech. 

Novels which begin in the middle and work first 
forward and then back, win favor as blows against 
the bourgeois idea that a straight line is the shortest 

161 



PIECES OF HATE 

distance between two points. Of course, the radical 
author can do almost anything the conservative does 
and still retain the admiration of his fellows by dint 
of a very small amount of tact. Rhapsodies on love 
will be damned as sentimental if the author has been 
injudicious enough to allow his characters to marry, 
but he can retain exactly the same language if he 
is careful to add a footnote that nothing is contem- 
plated except the freest of free unions. A few works 
are praised by both sides because each finds a dif- 
ferent interpretation for the same set of facts. Thus, 
the authors of "Dulcy" were surprised to find them- 
selves warmly greeted in one of the Socialist dailies 
as young men who had struck a blow for government 
ownership of all essential industries merely because 
they had introduced a big business man into their 
play and, for the purposes of comic relief, had made 
him a fool. 

Class consciousness has become so acute that it 
extends even beyond the realms of literature and 
drama into the field of sports. The recent "battle of 
the century" eventually simmered down into the 
minds of many as a struggle between the forces of 
reaction and revolution. It was known before the 
fight that Carpentier would wear a flowered silk 
bathrobe into the ring, while Dempsey would be clad 
in an old red sweater. How could symbolism be more 
perfect? Anybody who believed that Carpentier's 
right would be good enough to win, was immediately 
set down as a profiteer in munitions who would un- 
doubtedly welcome the outbreak of another war. 
Likewise it was unsafe to express the opinion that 

162 



ART FOR ARGUMENT'S SAKE 

Dempsey's infighting might be too much for the 
Frenchman, lest one be identified with the little will- 
ful group of pacifists who impeded the progress of 
the war. Eventually, the startling revelation was 
made by the reporter of a morning newspaper that 
he had seen Carpentier smelling a rose. After that, 
any belief in the invader's prowess laid whoever ex- 
pressed it open to the charge, not only of aristocracy, 
but of degeneracy as well. After Dempsey's blows 
wore down his opponent and defeated him, it was 
generally felt by his supporters that the eight-hour 
day was safe, and that the open shop would never 
be generally accepted in America. 

The only encouraging feature in the increasingly 
sharp feeling of class consciousness among critics is 
a growing frankness. Reviewers are willing to admit 
now that they think so and so's novel is an indifferent 
piece of work because he speaks ill of conscription 
and they believe in it. A year or so ago they would 
have pretended that they did not like it because the 
author split some infinitives. 

One of the frankest writing men we ever met is 
the editor of a Socialist newspaper. "Whenever 
there's a big strike," he explained to me, "I always 
tell the man who goes out on the story, 'Never see a 
striker hit a scab. Always see the scab hit the 
striker.' " 

"You see," he went on, "there are seven or eight 
other newspapers in town who will see it just the 
other way and I've got to keep the balance straight." 

There used to be a practice somewhat similar to 
this among baseball umpires. Whenever the man 

163 



PIECES OF HATE 

behind the plate felt that he had called a bad ball 
a strike, he would bide his time until the next good 
one came over and that he would call a ball. The 
practice was known as "evening up" and it is no 
longer considered efficient workmanship. That is, not 
among umpires. The radical editor was not in the 
least abashed when I guoted to him the remark of 
a man who said that he always read his paper with 
great interest because he invariably found the edi- 
torial opinions in the news and the news on the edi- 
torial page. "That's just what I'm trying to do," he 
exclaimed delightedly. "I'm not trying to give the 
people the news. I'm trying to make new Socialists 
every day." 

It is to be feared that even those writers who have 
the opportunity to be more deliberate than the jour- 
nalists have been struck with the idea that by words 
they can shape the world a little closer to the heart's 
desire. Throughout the war we were told so con- 
stantly that battles could be decided and ships built 
and wars decided by the force of propaganda, that 
every man with a portable typewriter in his suitcase 
began to think of it as a baton. There was a day 
when a novelist was satisfied if he could capture a 
little slice of life and get it between the covers of 
his book. Now everybody writes to shake the world. 
The smell of propaganda is unmistakable. 

With literature in its present state of mind critics 
cannot be expected to watch and wait for the great 
American novel or the great American play. Instead 
they look for the book which made the tariff possible, 
or the play which ended the steel strike. 

164 



XXXIII 



NO 'rahs for ray 



Richard Le Gallienne was lamenting, once, that he 
probably would never be able to write a best-seller 
like Hall Caine or Marie Corelli. "It's no use," he 
said. "You can't fake it. Bad writing is a gift," 

So is college spirit. That is why almost all the 
plays and motion pictures about football games and 
hazing and such like are so fearfully unconvincing. 
Nobody who is hired for money can possibly make 
the same joyful ass of himself as a collegian under 
strictly amateur momentum. Expense has not been 
spared, nor pains, in the building of "Two Minutes 
To Go," with the delightful Charlie Ray, but it just 
isn't real. Films may be faithful enough in depicting 
such trifling emotions as hate and passion and mother- 
love, but the feeling which animates the freshman 
when Yale has the ball on the three-yard line is some- 
thing a little too searing and sacred for the camera's 
eye. 

One of the difficulties of catching any of this spirit 
for play or for picture is that there is no logical rea- 
son for its existence. Logic won't touch it. The di- 
rector and his entire staff would all have to be in- 
spired to be able to make a college picture actually 
glow. There is not that much inspiration in all Holly- 
wood. 

165 



PIECES OF HATE 

The partisanship of the big football games has 
always been to me one of the most mystifying fea- 
tures in American life. It is all the more mystifying 
from the fact that it grips me acutely twice a year 
when Harvard plays Princeton, and again when we 
play Yale. I find no difficulty in being neutral about 
Bates of Middlebury. It did not even worry me much 
when Georgia scored a touchdown. The encounters 
with Yale and Princeton are not games but ordeals. 
Of course, there is no sense to it. A victory for Har- 
vard or a defeat makes no striking difference in the 
course of my life. My job goes on just the same 
and the servants will stay, and there will be a fur- 
nace and food even if the Crimson is defeated by 
many touchdowns. 

I never played on a Harvard eleven, nor even had 
a relative on any of the teams. There was a second 
cousin on the scrub, but he was before my time, and 
it cannot be that all my interest has been drummed 
up by his career. I don't know the coaches nor 
the players. Yale and Princeton have not wronged 
me. In fact, I once sold an article to a Yale man 
who is now conducting a magazine in New York. 
Naturally it was on a neutral subject, which hap- 
pened to be the question of whether mothers were 
any more skillful than fathers in handling children. 
Orange and black are beautiful colors and "Old Nas- 
sau" is a stirring tune. Woodrow Wilson meant 
well at Paris, and Big Bill Edwards was as pleasant- 
spoken a collector of income taxes as I ever expect to 
meet. 

Yet all this is forgotten when the teams run out 
166 



NO 'RAHS FOR RAY 

on to the gridiron. I find myself yelling "Block that 
kick! Block that kick! Block that kick!" or "Touch- 
down! Touchdown!" as if my heart would break. It 
is pretty lucky that the old devil who bought Faust's 
soul has never come along and tempted me in the 
middle of a football game. He could drive a good 
bargain cheap. There have been times when for 
nothing more than a five yard gain through the center 
of the line he could have had not only my soul, but 
a third mortgage on the house. If he played me right 
he might even get that recipe for making near beer 
closer. 

The strangest part of all this is that the emotions 
described are not exceptional. A number of sane per- 
sons have assured me that they feel just the same 
about the big games. One of my best friends in 
college was always known to us as "the brother of the 
man who dropped the punt." The man who actually 
committed that dire deed was not even mentioned. I 
remember, also, a Harvard captain whose team lost 
and who horrified the entire university by remarking 
at the team dinner a few weeks later that he was 
always going to look back on the season with pleasure 
because he thought that he and the rest of the play- 
ers had had good fun, even though they had lost to 
Yale. Naturally he was never allowed to return to 
Cambridge after his graduation. His unfortunate re- 
mark came a few years before the passage of the se- 
dition law, but there was a militant public opinion in 
the college fully capable of taking care of such cases. 

Feeling, then, as I do, that there is no such poignant 
ordeal possible to man as sitting through a tight Har- 

167 



PIECES OF HATE 

vard-Yale game, any screen story of football seems 
not only piffling but sacrilegious. In the Charlie 
Ray picture, the two contending teams were Stanley 
and Baker. There were views of the rival cheering 
sections and closer ones of Charlie Ray running the 
length of the gridiron for a touchdown. This feat 
was made somewhat easy for him by the fact that 
all the extra people engaged for the picture seemed 
to have been instructed to slap him lightly above the 
knee with the little finger of the right hand and then 
fall upon their faces so that he might step over them. 

It was not this palpable artificiality which was the 
most potent factor in bringing me into an extreme 
state of calm. A long Harvard run made possible 
by the entire Yale team's being struck by lightning 
would seem to me thoroughly satisfactory. The 
trouble with "Two Minutes To Go" was that I never 
forgot for a moment that Charlie Ray was a motion 
picture star instead of a halfback. Of course, you 
might object that I should properly have the same 
feeling when seeing Ray in pictures where he is en- 
gaged in altercations with holdup men and other 
scoundrels. That is different. In such situations the 
stratagems of the films are amply convincing, but in 
football nobody can possibly play the villain so ef- 
fectively as a Yaleman. We have often wondered 
how one university could possibly corner the entire 
supply of treacherous and beetle-browed humanity. 

The foemen lined up against Charlie Ray didn't 
begin to be fierce enough. Nor did the rival groups 
of rooters serve any better to convince me of their 
authenticity. It was quite evident that they were 

168 



NO 'RAHS FOR RAY 

swayed by no emotion other than that of a willing- 
ness to obey the orders of the director. Football is 
too warm and passionate a thing to be reduced to the 
flat dimensions of the screen. Battle, murder, sud- 
den death and many other things are done amply well 
in films. Football is different. Though it injure the 
heart, increase the blood pressure and shorten life, 
only the reality will do. 



169 



XXXIV 

"ataboy!" 

Thomas Burke has a cultivated taste for low life 
and he records his delight in Limehouse so vividly 
that it is impossible to doubt his sincerity. In his 
volume of essays called "Out and About London," 
he spreads his enthusiasm over the entire "seven 
hundred square miles of London, in which adventure 
is shyly lurking for those who will seek her out." 

In the spreading there is at least ground for sus- 
picion that here and there authentic enthusiasm has 
worn a bit thin. It is no more than a suspicion, for 
Burke is a skillful writer who can set an emotion 
to galloping without showing the whip. Only when 
he comes to describe a baseball game is the Ameri- 
can reader prepared to assert roundly that Burke is 
merely parading an enthusiasm which he does not 
feel. We could not escape the impression that the 
English author felt that a baseball game was the 
most primitive thing America had to offer and that 
he was in duty bound to enthuse over this exhibition 
of human nature in the raw. 

We have seen many Englishmen at baseball games. 
We have even attempted to explain to a few visitors 
the fine points of the game, why John McGraw spoke 
in so menacing a manner to the umpire or why Hughie 

170 



"ATABOY!" 

Jennings ate grass and shouted "Ee-Yah!" at the bat- 
ter. Invariably the Englishman has said that it was 
all very strange and all very delightful. Never have 
we believed him. The very essence of nationality lies 
in the fact that the other fellow's pastime invariably 
seems a ridiculous affair. One may accept the cook- 
ery, the politics and the religion of a foreign nation 
years before he will take an alien game to his heart. 
We doubt whether it would be possible to teach an 
American to say "Well played" in less than a couple 
of generations. 

Burke has no fears. Not only does he describe 
the game in a general way, but he plunges boldly 
ahead in an effort to record American slang. The 
title of the essay is well enough. Burke calls it "Atta- 
boy!" This is, of course, authentic American slang. 
It meets all the requirements, being in common use, 
having a definite meaning and affording a short cut 
to the expression of this meaning. We can not quite 
accept the spelling. There is, perhaps, room for con- 
troversy here. When the American army first came 
to France the word attracted a good deal of attention 
and some French philologists undertook to follow it 
to the source. One of them quickly discovered that 
he was dealing not with a word but a contracted 
phrase. We are of the opinion that thereafter he went 
astray, for he declared that "Ataboy" was a contrac- 
tion of "At her boy," and he offered the freely trans- 
lated substitute "Au travail gargon." 

It will be observed that Mr. Burke has given his 
attaboy a "t" too many. "That's the boy" is the 
source of the word. Perhaps it would be more ac- 

171 



PIECES OF HATE 

curately spelled if written " 'at 'a boy." The single 
"a" is a neutral vowel which has come to take the 
place of the missing "the." The same process has oc- 
curred in the popular phrases " 'ataswingin' " and 
" 'ataworkin'." These, however, have a lesser stand- 
ing. "Ataboy" is almost official. One of the Ameri- 
can army trains which ran regularly from Paris to 
Chaumont began as the Atterbury special, being 
named after the general in charge of railroads. In 
a week it had become the Ataboy special, and so it 
remained even in official orders. 

Some of the slang which Burke records as being 
observed at the game is palpably inaccurate. Thus 
he reports hearing a rooter shout, "Take orf that 
pitcher!" It is safe to assume that what the rooter 
actually said was, "Ta-ake 'im out!" 

Again Burke writes, "An everlasting chorus, with 
reference to the scoring board, chanted like an an- 
them — 'Go-ing up! Go-ing up! Go-ing up!' ' 

Now, as a matter of fact, the "go-ing up!" did not 
refer to the scoring board, but to the pitcher who must 
have been manifesting signs of losing control. The 
shouts of baseball crowds are so closely standardized 
that we think we have a right to view with a certain 
distrust such unfamiliar snatches of slang as "He's 
pitching over a plate in heaven," or "Gimme some 
barb' wire. I wanter knit a sweater for the barnacle 
on second," and also, "Hey, catcher, quit the dia- 
mond, and lemme l'il brother teach you." It is im- 
possible for us to reconcile "lemme l'il brother" and 
"quit the diamond." 

It must be said in justice to Burke that it is en- 
172 



"ATABOY!" 

tirely possible that he did hear some of the outlandish 
phrases which he has jotted down. Among the dough- 
boys gathered for the game there may have been 
some former college professor who had devoted the 
afternoon to convincing his comrades that he was no 
highbrow, but a typical American. Such a theory 
would account for "quit the diamond." 



173 



XXXV 

HOW TO WIN MONEY AT THE RACES- 



Perseverance, courage, acumen, unceasing vigi- 
lance, hard work and application are all required 
of the man who would win money at the races. He 
should also have some capital in easily marketable 
securities. 

During his preliminary days at the university, the 
man who would win money on the races should spe- 
cialize in science. It will be quite impossible for 
him in his later career to tell whether his selection 
was beaten by a nose or a head, unless he is abso- 
lutely familiar with the bone structure of the horse 
(Equidoe), (Ungulate), (E. caballus). In fresh- 
man zoology he will learn that, at the highest, the 
teeth number forty-four, and that the horse as a do- 
mestic animal dates from prehistoric times. This will 
serve to explain to him the character of the entries in 
some of the selling races. 

Geology will make it possible for him to distin- 
guish between "track — slow" and "track — muddy." 
The romance languages need not be avoided. French 
will enable the student to ask the price on Trompe 
La Morte without recourse to the subterfuge of 
"What are you laying on the top one?" In spite of 
the amount of science required, the young man will 

174 



HOW TO WIN MONEY- 



find that he has small need of mathematics. A work- 
ing knowledge of subtraction will suffice. 

As has been well said in many a commencement 
address, college is not the end but merely the be- 
ginning of education. The graduate should begin 
his intensive preparation not later than twelve hours 
before going to the track. He will find that the first 
edition of The Morning Telegraph is out by midnight. 
Hindoo's selections are generally on page eight. I 
have never known the identity of Hindoo, but there 
is internal evidence pointing toward President Hard- 
ing. At any rate, Hindoo is a man who has mas- 
tered the pre-election style of the President. His good 
will to all horses, black, brown and bay, is boundless. 

In studying Mr. Hindoo's advice concerning the 
first race at Belmont Park last week, I found, "Cap- 
tain Alcock — Last race seems to give him the edge." 
If I had gone no further, my mind might have been 
easy, but in chancing to look down the column I 
noted, "Servitor — Well suited under the conditions"; 
"Pen Rose — Plainly the one that is to be feared"; 
"Bellsolar — May be heard from if up to her last 
race." On such minute examination the edge of Cap- 
tain Alcock seemed to grow more blunt. "Neddam," 
I discovered, "will bear watching," and "Hobey 
Baker may furnish the surprise." To a man of scien- 
tific training such conflicting testimony is disturbing. 
What for instance would the world have thought of 
the scholarship of Aristotle if, after declaring that 
the earth was spherical, he had added that it might 
be well to have a good place bet — at two to one- — on 
its being flat. 

175 



PIECES OF HATE 

As happens all too often in the swing away from 
science, mere emotion was allowed to rush in unim- 
peded. Turning to a publication called The Daily 
Running Horse, I found the section dealing with the 
first race to be run at Belmont Park and read, "Cap- 
tain Alcock is a nice horse right now." That settled 
it. All too seldom in this world does one find an 
individual who has the edge and still refrains from 
slashing about with it and cutting people. Captain 
Alcock was represented to us as "nice" in spite of 
the fact that he was "in with a second rate lot," as 
The Daily Running Horse went on to state. Later it 
seemed to us that the boast was in bad taste, but this 
factor, which we recognized immediately after the 
running of the first race as groundless condescension, 
appeared at the time a rather fetching sort of democ- 
racy. Captain Alcock was willing to associate with 
second raters and didn't even mind admitting it. 

The price was eleven to ten, and after we made our 
bet the bookmaker revised his figures down to nine to 
ten. There was a thrill in having been a party to 
"hammering down the price." Soon we were to wish 
that Captain Alcock had been much less nice. Away 
from the barrier he went on his journey of a mile 
with a lead of two lengths. Next it was four and then 
five. His heels threw dust upon the second raters. 
Around the turn came Captain Alcock flaunting his 
edge in every stride. As they straightened out into 
the stretch the man behind us remarked, "Captain 
Alcock will win in a common canter." 

The Captain was content to do no such thing. Al- 
though in with second raters he remained a nice horse 

176 



HOW TO WIN MONEY- 



and he was willing to do nothing common even for 
the sake of victory. He began to ease up in order 
to become companionable with the field. Evidently 
he had felt unduly conspicuous so far in front. Win- 
ning in a common canter was not cricket to his mind. 
He wanted to make a race of it while there was still 
time. And as the speed and the lead of Captain Al- 
cock abated, down the stretch from far in the rear 
dashed the black mare Bellsolar. Suddenly I re- 
membered the ominous words of Hindoo, "May be 
heard from if up to her last race." Evidently Bell- 
solar was up. Captain Alcock was carrying the busi- 
ness of being nice much too far. Before he could 
do anything about it, Bellsolar was at his shoulders. 
She did not stop for greeting, but dashed past and 
won before the genial Captain could begin sprinting 
again. 

As a matter of fact, it was not until the next day 
that I appreciated just how much wisdom had been 
contained in The Daily Running Horse, advice which 
I had neglected. Turning back to the first race I 
found, "Advised play — None, too tough." If the 
tipster had only kept up that pace throughout the 
afternoon all his followers would be winners at the 
track. 



177 



XXXVI 

ONE TOUCH OF SLAPSTICK 

The Duchess in Clair de Lune implored her gen- 
tleman friend to speak to her roughly, using hedge 
and highroad talk. Theatrical managers have now 
come to realize that many of us who may never hope 
to be duchesses are still swayed by this back to the 
soil movement. The humor of musical comedy grows 
more robust as the season wanes. It is broader, 
thicker and, to my mind, funnier. Comedy, like 
Antaeus, must keep at least a tiptoe on the earth. 
When the spirit of fun begins to sicken it is time 
that he should be hit severely with a bladder. Hav- 
ing been knocked down, he will rise refreshed. 

All of which is preliminary to the expression of 
the opinion that Jim Barton, now playing at the 
Century, is the funniest clown who has appeared in 
New York this season. Mr. Barton was discovered 
in a burlesque show by some astute theatrical scout 
several seasons ago. Burlesque was several rungs 
higher in the ladder than his starting point, for his 
career included appearances in carnivals and the little 
shows which ply up and down some of the rivers, 
giving nightly performances on their boat whenever 
there is a cluster of light big enough to indicate a 
village. Jim Barton has been trained, therefore, in 

178 



ONE TOUCH OF SLAPSTICK 

capturing the interest and attention of primitive and 
unsophisticated theatergoers. This training has en- 
couraged him in zest and violence. It has impressed 
upon him the conception that the fundamental appeal 
to all sorts of people and all sorts of intelligences is 
rhythm. "When in doubt, dance" is his motto. 

Primarily he developed his dancing as something 
which should make people laugh. It was, and is, full 
of stunts and grotesque movements and surprising 
turns. But it has not remained just funny. Con- 
sciously or unconsciously he knows, just as Charlie 
Chaplin knows, that funny things must be savored 
with something else to capture interest completely. 
And when you watch the antics of Barton and laugh 
there comes unexpectedly, every now and then, a sud- 
den tightening of the emotions as you realize that 
some particular pose or movement is not funny at 
all, but a gorgeously beautiful picture. For instance, 
when Barton begins his skating dance the first reac- 
tion is one of amusement. There is a recognizable 
burlesque of the traditional stunts of the man on ice, 
but that is lost presently in the further realization 
that the thing is amazingly skillful and graceful. 
Again he follows a Spanish dancer with castanets and 
seems to depend upon nothing more than the easy 
laugh accorded to the imitator, but as he goes on it 
isn't just a burlesque. He has captured the whole 
spirit and rhythm of the dance. 

There is, perhaps, something of hypocrisy and 
swank in taking the performance of Barton and seem- 
ing to imply, "Of course I like this man because I 
see all sorts of things in his work that his old bur- 

179 



PIECES OF HATE 

lesque audiences never recognized." It is dishonest, 
too, because as a matter of fact I like exactly the 
same things which won his audiences in the old 
Columbia circuit. I have never been able to steel 
myself against the moment in which the comedian 
steps up behind the stout lady and slaps her resound- 
ingly between the shoulder blades. Jim Barton is 
particularly good because he hits louder and harder 
than any other comedian I ever saw. But even for 
this liking a defense is possible. The influx of bur- 
lesque methods ought to have a thoroughly cleansing 
influence in American musical comedy. More re- 
fined entertainment has often been unpleasantly sa- 
lacious, not because it was daring but because it was 
cowardly. Familiar stories of the smoking car and 
the barroom have been brought into Broadway thea- 
ters often enough, but in disguised form. They have 
minced into the theater. The appeal created by this 
form of humor has been never to the honest laugh but 
to the smirk. If I were a censor I think I would al- 
low a performer to say or do almost anything in the 
theater if only he did it frankly and openly. The 
blue pencil ought to be used only against furtive 
things. You may not like smut, but it is never half 
so objectionable as shamefacedness. The best tonic 
I can think of for the hangdog school of musical 
comedy to which we have fast been drifting is the 
immediate importation to Broadway of fifty comedi- 
ans exactly like Jim Barton. Of course, the only 
trouble is that the scouts would probably turn up 
with the report that there was not even one. 

Still rumor is going about of at least one other. 
180 



ONE TOUCH OF SLAPSTICK 

I am reliably informed that Bobby Clark of Peek-A- 
Boo is one of the funniest men of the year. Unfor- 
tunately I am not in a position to make a first hand 
report because on the night his show opened at the 
Columbia I was watching Mixed Marriage break into 
another theater, or attending a revival of John Fer- 
guson or something like that. 

Accordingly, I missed the scene in which Bobby 
Clark tries to put his head into the lion's mouth. 
Clark must be a good comedian, because he sounds 
funny even when you get him at second or third hand 
in the form, "And then you see he says, 'You do it 
fine. You even smell like a lion. Take off the head 
now and we'll get along.' " 

As it has been explained to me, Clark and the 
other comedian are hired by a circus because the 
trained lion has suddenly become too ill to perform. 
Clark's partner is to put on a lion's skin and pre- 
tend to be a lion while Clark goes through the usual 
stunts of the trainer, including the feat of putting 
his head into the lion's mouth. At the last minute 
the lion recovers and is wheeled out on to the stage 
in a big cage. Clark believes the animal is his part- 
ner in disguise and compliments him warmly on the 
manner in which he roars. Finally, however, he be- 
comes irritated when there is no response, except a 
roar, to his request, "Take off the head now and come 
on." After a second roar Clark remarks with no lit- 
tle pique, "Come on, now, cut it out, you're not so 
good as all that." 

What happens after that I don't know because the 
people who have been to the Columbia Theater always 

181 



PIECES OF HATE 

leave you in doubt as to whether Clark actually goes 
into the lion's den or not. Presumably not, because 
later in the show, according to these reports, there is 
a drill by The World's Worst Zouaves in which Clark 
as the chief zouave whistles continually for new for- 
mations only to have nothing happen. Whether Clark 
is the originator of the material about the lion and 
the rest, or only the executor, I am not prepared 
to say. All the scouts talk as if he made it up as 
he went along, and whenever a comedian can bring 
about that state of mind there need be no doubt of 
his ability. 



182 



XXXVII 

DANGER SIGNALS FOR READERS 

By this lime, of course, we ought to know the dan- 
ger signals in a novel and realize the exact spot at 
which to come to a full stop. On page 54 of "The 
Next Corner," by Kate Jordan, we found the situation 
in which Robert, husband, came face to face with El- 
sie, wife, after a separation of three years. Mining 
interests had called him to Burma, and she, being 
given the world to choose from, had decided to live 
in Paris. He was punctual at the end of his three 
years in arriving at his wife's apartment, but she 
was not there. The maid informed him that she had 
gone to a tea at the home of the Countess Longue- 
val. Without stopping to wait for an invitation John 
hurried after her. He entered the huge and garish 
reception room and there, yes there, was Elsie. But 
perhaps Miss Jordan had better tell it: 

"The effect she produced on him, in her yellow 
gauze, that though fashioned for afternoon wear was 
so transparent it left a good deal of her body visible, 
with her face undisguisedly tricked out and her 
gleaming cigarette poised, was a harsh one — a 
marionette with whom fashion was an idolatry; an 
over-decorated, empty eggshell. She could feel this, 
and in a desperate way persisted in the affectation 

183 



PIECES OF HATE 

which sustained her, the more so that under Robert's 
earnest gaze a feeling of guilt made her hideously 
uncomfortable. 

" 'Throw that away,' Robert said quietly with a 
scant look at the cigarette." 

It seemed strange to us that Robert had been so lit- 
tle influenced toward liberalism during his three years 
in Burma, for that was the spot where Kipling's sol- 
dier found the little Burmese girl "a smokin' of a 
whackin' big cheeroot." 

Still, Robert carried his point. Elsie, our heroine, 
gave a laugh. What sort of a laugh, do you sup- 
pose? Quite so, "an empty laugh," and "she turned 
to flick it from her fingers"; that is, the cigarette. 
Perhaps we should add that she flicked it to "a table 
that held the smokers' service." Elsie, undoubtedly, 
had degenerated during Robert's absence, but she was 
still too much the lady to put ashes on the carpet. 
And yet she did use cosmetics. This was the second 
thing which Robert took up with her. In the cab he 
wanted to know why she put "all that stuff" on her 
face. Perhaps her answer was a little perplexing, 
for she said, "Embellishment, mon cher. Pour la 
beaute, pour la charme!" 

"I'm quite of the world in my tolerance," he ex- 
plained to her. "If you needed help of this sort 
and applied it delicately to your face I'd not mind. 
In fact, if delicately done, probably I'd not know 
of it." 

This, of course, seems to us an immoral attitude. 
Things are right or wrong, whether one notices them 
or not. After all, the recording angel would know. 

184 



DANGER SIGNALS FOR READERS 

Elsie could use paint and powder with such delicacy 
as to deceive him. However, we are interrupting 
Robert, who went on, and "His voice grew kinder, 
although his eyes remained sternly grave." 

"It's been from the beginning of the world," he 
said, "and it is in the East, wherever there are women. 
But — and make a note of it — they are always women 
of a certain sort." 

Seemingly, Robert got away with this statement, 
although it is not true. Manchu women of the highest 
degree paint a great scarlet circle on the side of 
their face in spite of the fact that there is a native 
proverb which, freely translated, may be rendered, 
"Discretion is the better part of pallor." 

It is only fair to add that the indiscretions of Elsie 
went beyond powder and paint and even beyond 
smoking cigarettes. When her husband told her that 
he must make a brief business trip to England she 
asked to be excused from accompanying him on 
the ground that she would prefer to remain in Paris 
for a while. As a matter of fact, she planned to go 
to Spain. And she did. She went to a house party 
at the home of Don Arturo Valda y Moncado, 
Marques de Burgos. She had been told that it was 
to be a house party, but when she got to the isolated 
little castle on the top of the crag she found no one 
but Don Arturo Valda y Moncado, Marques de 
Burgos. No sooner had she arrived than a storm 
began to rage and the last mule coach went down 
the mountain. She must stay the night! Still, 
after her first wild pleadings that he allow her to 
clamber down the mountain alone at night until she 

185 



PIECES OF HATE 

could find a hotel, reasonable in price and respecta- 
ble, she did not feel so lonely with Arturo. To be 
sure, he sounded a good deal like a house party all 
by himself, and more than that she loved him. 

After dinner he began to make love and soon she 
joined him. He grew impassioned, and Elsie said 
that she would throw in her lot with his and never 
leave him. In a transport of joy, Arturo was about 
to bestow upon her one of those Spanish kisses which 
no novelist can round off in less than a page and a 
half. Elsie commanded him to be patient. First, she 
said, she must write a letter to her husband. In 
this moment Arturo was superb in his Latin restraint. 
He did not suggest a cablegram or even a special 
delivery stamp. Perhaps it would have meant death 
to go to the postoffice on such a night. Elsie wrote 
to Robert, painstakingly and frankly, confessing that 
she loved Arturo and was going to remain with him 
and that she would not be home at all any more. Then 
a sure footed serving man was intrusted with the let- 
ter and told to seek a post box on the mountain 
side. 

No sooner was that out of the way than a Spanish 
peasant entered the house and shot Arturo. It seems 
that Arturo had betrayed his daughter. The shot 
killed Arturo and Elsie wished she had never sent the 
letter. Unfortunately, you can't make your confes- 
sion and eat it too. No postscript was possible. 
Elsie staggered down the mountain side and a chap- 
ter later she woke up in a hospital in Bordeaux. The 
strain had been too great. 

Nor could we stand it either. We sought out some- 
186 



DANGER SIGNALS FOR READERS 

body else who had already read the book and he 
told us that Elsie went back to America and found 
her husband, and that for months and months she 
lived in an agony of shame, thinking he knew all 
about what had never happened. Finally she decided 
that he didn't, and then she lived months and months 
in an agony of fear that the letter was still on its way. 
She got up every morning, opening everything fever- 
ishly and finding only bills and advertisements. At 
this point the person who knew the story was in- 
terrupted in telling us about it, but we think we can 
supply the end. 

After more months and months, in which first 
shame died and then fear, hope was born. And then 
came happiness. The old hunted look faded from 
the eyes of Elsie. She seemed a superbly normal 
woman, save in one respect. During the political 
campaign of 1920, when practically every visitor 
who came to the house would remark, at one time or 
other during the course of the evening, "Don't you 
think this man Burleson is a mess?" Elsie would look 
up with just the suggestion of a faint smile about 
her fine, sensitive mouth and answer, "Oh, I don't 
know." 



187 



XXXVIII 

ADVENTURE MADE PAINLESS 

One of my favorite characters in all fiction is D'Ar- 
tagnan. He was forever fighting duels with people 
and stabbing them, or riding at top speed over lonely 
roads at night to save a woman's name or some- 
thing. I believe that I glory in D'Artagnan because 
of my own utter inability to do anything with a 
sword. Beyond self-inflicted razor wounds, no blood 
has been shed by me. Horseback riding is equally 
foreign to my experience, and I have done nothing 
for any woman's name. And why should I? D'Ar- 
tagnan does all these things so much better that there 
is not the slightest necessity for personal muddling. 
When he gallops I ride too, clattering along at break- 
neck speed between ghostly lines of trees. Only 
there is no ache in my legs the next morning. Nor 
heartache either over heroines. 

He is my substitute in adventure. After an eve- 
ning with him I can go down to the office in the 
morning and go through routine work without the 
slightest annoying consciousness that it is, after all, 
pretty dull stuff. I am not tempted to put on my hat 
and coat and fling up my job in order to go out to seek 
adventures with swordsmen and horses and provoca- 
tive ladies in black masks. 

Undoubtedly there must be some longing in me for 
188 



ADVENTURE MADE PAINLESS 

all this or I would not have such a keen interest in 
The Three Musketeers, but, having read about it, 
there is no craving for actual deeds. Possibly, after a 
long evening with a tale of adventure, I may swag- 
ger a little the next day and puzzle a few office boys 
with a belligerent manner to which they are not ac- 
customed; but they do not fit into the picture per- 
fectly enough to maintain the mood. It has been sat- 
isfied, and when it begins to tug again there are other 
books which will serve to gratify my keen desire to 
hear the clink of blades and the sound of running 
footsteps on the cobbles as the miscreants give way. 
The scurvy knaves! The system saves time and ex- 
pense and arnica. Without it I might not be alto- 
gether reconciled to Brooklyn. 

In my opinion, most of the men and women whom 
I know find the same relief in books and plays and 
motion pictures. The rather stout lady on the floor 
below us has three small children. I imagine that 
they are a fearful nuisance, but recently, after get- 
ting them to bed, she has been reading "The Sheik." 
Her husband — he is one of these masterful men — 
told rne that he had glanced at the book himself and 
found it silly and highly colored. He said that he 
was going to tell her to stop. I agreed with him as 
to the silliness of the book, but it seemed to me that 
his wife had earned her right to a fling on the desert. 
If I knew him a little better, I would go on to say 
that it ought to comfort him to have his wife reading 
such a highly flavored romance. He is excessively 
jealous, and he ought to be pleased to have a pos- 
sibly roving fancy so completely occupied by an 

189 



PIECES OF HATE 

intense interest in an Arab chieftain who never lived 
— no, not even in Arabia or any place at all outside 
the pages of a book. The husband has no need to 
worry. There is no one in our neighborhood who 
resembles Ben Ahmed Abdullah — or whatever his 
fool name may be. 

Once, when my neighbor found me at the door of 
his apartment, where I had gone to borrow half an 
orange, he seemed unusually surly. That was cer- 
tainly a groundless suspicion. At the time I was en- 
tirely absorbed in "The Outline of History." Mrs. 
X — of course I can't give her name or even provide 
any description which might serve to identify her — 
was entirely safe from my attentions, for during that 
particular week I was rather taken with Cleopatra, 
even though Wells did speak slightingly of her. Un- 
fortunately we have no adequate idea of Cleopatra's 
appearance. Wells attempts no description. The only 
existing portrait is one of those conventionalized 
Egyptian things with the arms held out stiffly as if 
the siren of the Nile was trying to indicate to the 
clerk the size of the shoe which she desired. Still, 
we can imply something from the enthusiasm of An- 
tony and the others. Somehow or other, I have al- 
ways felt sure that there was not the slightest resem- 
blance between Cleopatra and Mrs. X. 

Here is what I am trying to get at. Mr. X sells 
something or other, and apparently nobody in New 
York wants it, which makes it necessary for him 
to go on long journeys in which he touches Provi- 
dence, Boston, New Bedford, and Bangor. Practi- 
cally all my evenings are spent at home. 

190 



ADVENTURE MADE PAINLESS 

I have spoken of the stairs, but it is only a short 
flight. Mrs. X is sentimental and I am romantic. 
And we are both quite safe, and Mr. X can go peace- 
fully and enthusiastically around Bangor selling 
whatever it is which he has to sell. I resemble the 
Sheik Ben Ahmed Abdullah even less than Mrs. X 
resembles Cleopatra. Mr. Smith (we might as well 
abandon subterfuges and come out frankly with the 
name, since I have already been indiscreet enough 
for him to identify the personages concerned) has no 
riyal but a phantom one. 

Realizing how much Smith and I and Mrs. Smith 
owe to the protecting consolations of fiction, which in- 
cludes history as written by Wells, I feel that I ought 
to go on to generalize in favor of many much-abused 
types of entertainment. Whenever a youngster steals 
anything, or a wife runs away from home, the motion 
pictures are blamed. Censorship is devoted to re- 
moving all traces of bloodshed from the films. Po- 
lice magistrates are called in to suppress farces deal- 
ing with folk given to high jinks, on the ground that 
they threaten the morals of the community. We as- 
sume, of course, that the censors are thinking of 
morals in terms of deeds. They can hardly be am- 
bitious enough to hope to curtail the thoughts of a 
community. 

And I deny their major premise. Evil instincts are 
in us all. Practically everybody would enjoy rob- 
bing a bank or running away with somebody with 
whom he ought not to run away. These lawless in- 
stincts are invariably drained off by watching their 
mimic presentment in novels and films and plays. 

191 



PIECES OF HATE 

If only accurate statistics were available, I would 
wager and win on the proposition that not half of 
1 per cent of all the cracksmen in America have 
ever seen Alias Jimmy Valentine. No burglar 
could watch the play without being shamed out of 
his job by sheer envy. An ounce of self-respect — 
and there are figures to show that yeggs average three 
and a quarter — would keep a crook from continuing 
in his bungling way after observing the manner in 
which Jimmy Valentine opens the door of a safe 
merely by sandpapering his fingers. What sort of 
person do you suppose could go and buy nitrogly- 
cerine ungrudgingly after that? Even by the least 
optimistic estimate of human nature, the worst we 
could expect from a criminal who had seen the 
play would be to have him make a gallant and sin- 
cere effort to employ the touch system in his own 
career. Such attempts would be easy to frustrate. 
Night watchmen could creep up on the idealists and 
catch them unaware. They could be traced by their 
cursing. And, of course, the police might keep an 
eye open at the doors of the sandpaper shops. 

Kiki, David Belasco's adaptation from the French, 
taps another rich vein of human depravity and 
allows it to be exploited and exhausted by means 
of drama. The heroine of the play is a rowdy little 
baggage. She has a civil word for no man. The 
truth is not in her. Now, every child born into the 
world would like to lie and be impertinent. There 
is practically no fun in being polite, and truth-tell- 
ing is most indifferent judged solely as an indoor 
sport. Manners and veracity are things which people 

192 



ADVENTURE MADE PAINLESS 

learn slowly and painfully. Undoubtedly both are 
useful, though I am not at all sure that their im- 
portance is not somewhat exaggerated. Community 
life demands certain sacrifices, particularly as the 
pressure of civilization increases. The men of a 
primitive tribe do not get up in the subway to give 
their seats to ladies, because they have no subways. 
Likewise, having no hats, they are not obliged to take 
them off. Of course it goes deeper than that. Even 
a primitive civilization has weather, and yet one 
seldom hears an Indian in his native state observing: 
"Isn't it unusually warm for November?" 

Once everybody was primitive, and the most in- 
tensive training cannot wholly obliterate the old 
longing to be done with strange and self-imposed 
trappings. Until it is licked out of them, children 
are savagely rude. Training can alter practice, but 
even the most severe chastisement cannot get deep 
enough to affect an instinct. We all want to be rude, 
and we would, now and again, break loose in unre- 
strained spells of boorishness if it were not for an 
occasional Kiki who does the work for us. Accord- 
ingly, one of the most salutary forms of entertain- 
ment is the comedy of bad manners which recurs 
in our theater every once in so often. 

"But," I hear somebody objecting, "no matter how 
much each of us may like to be rude, we don't care 
much about it when it is done to us. In real life we 
would all run from Kiki because her monstrous brag- 
ging would irritate us, and her vulgarity and bad 
manners would be most annoying." 

All that would be true but for one factor. In any 
193 



PIECES OF HATE 

play which achieves success a curious transference 
of personality takes place. Before a play begins 
the audience is separated from the people on the stage 
by a number of barriers. First of all, there is the 
curtain, but by and by that goes up. The orchestra 
pit and the footlights still stand as moats to keep us 
at our distance. Then the magic of the playhouse be- 
gins to have its effect. If the actors and the play- 
wrights know the tricks of the business, they soon 
lift each impressionable person from his seat and 
carry him spiritually right into the center of the 
happenings. He becomes one or more persons in the 
play. We do not weep when Hamlet dies because 
we care anything in particular about him. His death 
can hardly come as a surprise. We knew he was go- 
ing to die. We even knew that he had been dead for 
a long time. 

Probably a few changes have been made in adapt- 
ing Kiki from the French. Kiki is made just a bit 
more respectable than she was in the French version, 
but she remains enough of a gamin and a rebel 
against taste and morals to satisfy the outlaw spirit of 
an American audience. She is for the New York 
stage "a good girl," but since this seems to be only 
the slightest check upon her speech and conduct, 
there can be no violent objection. Of course the type 
is perfectly familiar in the American theater, but this 
time it seems to us better written than usual, and 
much more skillfully and warmly played. Indeed, 
in my opinion, Miss Ulric's Kiki is the best comedy 
performance of the season. Even this is not quite 
enough. It has been a lean season, and this particu- 

194 



ADVENTURE MADE PAINLESS 

lar piece of acting is good enough to stand out in a 
brilliant one. The final scene of the play, in which 
Kiki apologizes for being virtuous, seems to me a 
truly dazzling interpretation of emotions. It is comic 
because it is surprising, and it is surprising because 
it concerns some of the true things which people 
neglect to discuss. 

By seeing Alias Jimmy Valentine, the safe-crack- 
ing instinct which lies dormant in us may be satisfied. 
Kiki allows us to indulge our fondness for being 
rude without alienating our friends. But more mis- 
sionary work remains. In The Idle Inn, Ben-Ami 
appears as a horse thief. Personally, I have no in- 
clination in that direction. I would not have the 
slightest idea what to do with a horse after stealing 
him. My apartment is quite small and up three 
flights of stairs. However, there are other vices em- 
bodied in the role which are more appealing to me. 
The role is that of a masterful man, which has 
always been among my thwarted ambitions. In the 
second act Ben- Ami breaks through a circle of danc- 
ing villagers and, seizing the bride, carries her off 
to the forest. Probably New York will never realize 
how many weddings have been carried on without 
mishap this season solely because of Ben-Ami's per- 
formance in The Idle Inn. In addition to entrust- 
ing him with all my eloping for the year, I purpose 
to let Ben-Ami swagger for me. He does it superbly. 
To my mind this young Jewish actor is one of the 
most vivid performers in our theater. His silences 
are more eloquent than the big speeches of almost 
any other star on Broadway. 

195 



PIECES OF HATE 

The play is nothing to boast about. Once it was 
in Yiddish, and as far as spirit goes it remains there. 
Once it was a language, and now it is words. The 
usually adroit Arthur Hopkins has fallen down badly 
by providing Ben-Ami with a mediocre company. He 
suffers like an All-America halfback playing on a 
scrub team. The other players keep getting in his 
way. 

One more production may be drawn into the dis- 
cussion, but only by extending the field of inquiry 
a little. The Chocolate Soldier, which is based on 
Shaw's Arms and the Man, can hardly be said to 
satisfy the soldiering instinct in us by a romantic tale 
of battle. Shaw's method is more direct. He con- 
tents himself with telling us that the only people 
who do get the thrill of adventure out of war are 
those who know it only in imagination. His perfect 
soldier is prosaic. It is the girl who has never seen 
a battle who romances about it. Still, Shaw does 
make it possible for us to practice one vice vicari- 
ously. After seeing a piece by him the spectator 
does not feel the need of being witty. He can just 
sit back and let George do it. 



196 



XXXIX 

THE TALL VILLA 

"The Tall Villa," by Lucas Malet, is a novel, but 
it may well serve as a textbook for those who want to 
know how to entertain a ghost. There need be no 
question that such advice is needed. For all the 
interest of the present generation in psychical re- 
search, we treat apparitions with scant courtesy. Sup- 
pose a visitor goes into a haunted room and at mid- 
night is awakened by a specter who carries a bloody 
dagger in one hand and his ghostly head in the other; 
does the guest ask the ghost to put his things down 
and stay a while? He does not. Instead, he rushes 
screaming from the room or pulls the bedclothes over 
his head and dies of fright. 

Ghosts walk because they crave society and they 
get precious little of it. Frances Copley, the heroine 
of "The Tall Villa," managed things much better. 
When the apparition of Lord Oxley first appeared to 
her she did not faint or scream. On the contrary, 
the author tells us, "The breeding, in which Frances 
Copley trusted, did not desert her now. After the 
briefest interval she went on playing — she very much 
knew not what, discords more than probably, as she 
afterward reflected!" 

After all, Lord Oxley may have been a ghost, but 
197 



PIECES OF HATE 

he was still a gentleman. Indeed, when she saw him 
later she perceived that the shadow "had grown, 
in some degree, substantial, taking on for the most 
part, definite outline, definite form and shape. That, 
namely, of a young man of notably distinguished 
bearing, dressed (in as far as, through the sullen 
evening light, Frances could make out) in clothes of 
the highest fashion, though according to a long dis- 
carded coloring and cut." 

From friends of the family Frances learned that 
young Oxley, who had been dead about a century 
and a half, had shot himself on account of unrequited 
love. After having looked him up and found that 
he was an eligible ghost in every particular, Frances 
decided to take him up. She continued to play for 
him without the discords. In fact, she began to look 
forward to his afternoon calls with a great deal of 
pleasure. Her husband did not understand her. She 
did not like his friends, and his friends' friends were 
impossible. Oxley's calls, on the other hand, were a 
social triumph. He was punctiliously exclusive. No- 
body else could even see him. When he came into 
the room others often noticed that the room grew 
suddenly and surprisingly chilly, but the author fails 
to point out whether that was due to Lord Oxley's 
station in life or after life. 

Bit by bit the acquaintance between Frances and 
the ghost ripened. At first she never looked at him 
directly, but regarded his shadow in the mirror. And 
they communicated only through music. Later 
Frances made so bold as to speak to his lordship. 

"When you first came," she said, her voice veiled, 
198 



THE TALL VILLA 

husky, even a little broken, "I was afraid. I thought 
only of myself. I was terrified both at you and what 
you might demand from me. I hastened to leave this 
house, to go away and try to forget. But I wasn't 
permitted to forget. While I was away much con- 
cerning you was told me which changed my feeling 
toward you and showed me my duty. I have come 
back of my own free will. I am still afraid, but I 
no longer mind being afraid. My desire now is not 
to avoid, but rather to meet you. For, as I have 
learned, we are kinsfolk, you and I; and since this 
house is mine, you are in a sense my guest. Of that 
I have come to be glad. I claim you as part of my 
inheritance — the most valued, the most welcome por- 
tion, if you so will it. If I can help, serve, comfort 
you, I am ready to do so to the utmost of my poor 
capacity." 

Alexis, Lord Oxley, made no reply, but it was 
evident that he accepted her offer of service and 
comfort graciously, for he continued to call regu- 
larly. His manners were perfect, although it is true 
that he never sent up his card, and yet in one matter 
Frances felt compelled to chide him and even tear- 
fully implore a reformation. It made her nervous 
when she noticed one day that he carried in his right 
hand the ghost of the pistol with which he had shot 
himself. Agreeably he abandoned his century old 
habit, but later he was able to give more convincing 
proof of his regard for Frances. She was alone in 
the Tall Villa when her husband's vulgar friend, 
Morris Montagu, called. He came to tell her that her 
husband was behaving disgracefully in South Amer- 

199 



PIECES OF HATE 

ica, and on the strength of that fact he made aggres- 
sive love. "Montagu's voice grew rasping and hoarse. 
But before, paralyzed by disgust and amazement, 
Frances had time to apprehend his meaning or com- 
bat his purpose, his coarse, pawlike — though much 
manicured — hand grasped her wrist." 

Suddenly the room grew chilly and Morris Mon- 
tagu, in mortal terror, relaxed his grip and began to 
run for the door as he cried, "Keep off, you ac- 
cursed devil, I tell you. Don't touch me. Ah! Ah! 
Damn you, keep off " 

It is evident to the reader that the ghost of Alexis, 
Lord Oxley, is giving the vulgar fellow what used 
to be known as "the bum's rush" in the days before 
the Volstead act. At any rate, the voice of Montagu 
grew feeble and distant and died away in the hall. 
Then the front door slammed. Frances was saved! 

After that, of course, it was evident to Alexis, Lord 
Oxley, and Frances that they loved each other. He 
began to talk to her in a husky and highfalutin style. 
He even stood close to her chair and patted her head. 
"Presently," writes Lucas Malet, "his hand dwelt 
shyly, lingering upon her bent head, her cheek, the 
nape of her slender neck. And Frances felt his hand 
as a chill yet tender draw, encircling, playing upon 
her. This affected her profoundly, as attacking her 
in some sort through the medium of her senses, from 
the human side, and thereby augmenting rather than 
allaying the fever of her grief." 

Naturally, things could not go on in that way for- 
ever, and so Alexis, Lord Oxley, arranged that 
Frances should cross the bridge with him into the 

200 



THE TALL VILLA 

next life. It was not difficult to arrange this. She 
had only to die. And so she did. All of which goes 
to prove that though it is well to be polite and well 
spoken to ghosts, they will bear watching as much 
as other men. 



201 



XL 

PROFESSOR GEORGE PIERCE BAKER 

A great many persons speak and write about Pro- 
fessor George Pierce Baker, of Harvard, as if he 
were a sort of agitator who made a practice of luring 
young men away from productive labor to write bad 
plays. There is no denying the fact that a certain 
number of dramatists have come out of Harvard's 
English 47, but the course also has a splendid record 
of cures. Few things in the world are so easy as 
to decide to write a play. It carries a sense of satis- 
faction entirely disproportionate to the amount of ef- 
fort entailed. Even the failure to put a single line 
on paper brings no remorse, for it is easy to convince 
yourself that the thing would have had no chance in 
the commercial theater. 

All this would be well enough except that the au- 
thor of a phantom play is apt to remain a martyr 
throughout his life. He makes a very bad husband 
and father and a worse bridge partner. Freudians 
know the complaint as the Euripidean complex. The 
sufferer is ailing because his play lies suppressd in 
his subconscious mind. 

Professor Baker digs these plays out. People who 
come to English 47 may talk about their plays as 
much as they choose, but they must write them, too. 

202 



GEORGE PIERCE BAKER 

Often a cure follows within forty-eight hours after 
the completion of a play. Sometimes it is enough 
for the author to read the thing through for him- 
self, but if that does not avail there is an excellent 
chance for him after his play has been read aloud 
by Professor Baker and criticized by the class. If a 
pupil still wishes to write plays after this there is no 
question that he belongs in the business. He may, of 
course, never earn a penny at it but, starve or flourish, 
he is a playwright. 

Professor Baker deserves the thanks of the com- 
munity, then, not only for Edward Sheldon, and 
Cleves Kincaid, and Miss Lincoln and Eugene O'Neill 
and some of the other playwrights who came from 
English 47, but also for the number of excellent 
young men who have gone straight from his class- 
room to Wall Street, and the ministry, and automo- 
bile accessories with all the nascent enthusiasm of 
men just liberated from a great delusion. 

In another respect Professor Baker has often been 
subjected to much undeserved criticism. Somebody 
has figured out that there are 2.983 more rapes in 
the average English 47 play than in the usual non- 
collegiate specimen of commercial drama. We feel 
comparatively certain that there is nothing in the per- 
sonality of Professor Baker to account for this or in 
the traditions of Harvard, either. We must admit 
that nowhere in the world is a woman quite so unsafe 
as in an English 47 play, but the faculty gives no 
official encouragement to this undergraduate enthusi- 
asm for sex problems. One must look beyond the Dean 
and the faculty for an explanation. It has something 

203 



PIECES OF HATE 

to do with Spring, and the birds, and the saplings 
and "What Every Young Man Ought to Know" and 
all that sort of thing. 

When I was in English 47 I remember that all 
our plays dealt with Life. At that none of us re- 
garded it very highly. Few respected it and certainly 
no one was in favor of it. The course was limited 
to juniors, seniors and graduate students and we were 
all a little jaded. There were times, naturally, when 
we regretted our lost illusions and longed to be fresh- 
men again and to believe everything the Sunday news- 
papers said about Lillian Russell. But usually there 
was no time for regrets ; we were too busy telling Life 
what we thought about it. Here there was a diver- 
gence of opinion. Some of the playwrights in Eng- 
lish 47 said that Life was a terrific tragedy. In 
their plays the hero shot himself, or the heroine, or 
both, as the circumstances might warrant, in the last 
act. The opposing school held that Life was a joke, 
a grim jest to be sure, cosmic rather than comic, but 
still mirthful. The plays by these authors ended with 
somebody ordering "Another small bottle of Pom- 
mery" and laughing mockingly, like a world-wise 
cynic. 

Bolshevism had not been invented at that time, 
but Capital was severely handled just the same. All 
our villains were recruited from the upper classes. 
Yet capitalism had an easy time of it compared with 
marriage. I do not remember that a single play which 
I heard all year in 47, whether from Harvard or 
Radcliffe, had a single word of toleration, let alone 
praise, for marriage. And yet it was dramatically 

204 



GEORGE PIERCE BAKER 

essential, for without marriage none of us would have 
been able to hammer out our dramatic tunes upon the 
triangle. Most of the epigrams also were about mar- 
riage. "Virtue is a polite word for fear," that is the 
sort of thing we were writing when we were not 
empowering some character to say, "Honesty is 
a bedtime fairy story invented for the proletariat," 
or "The prodigal gets drunk; the Puritan gets reli- 
gion." 

But up to date Professor Baker has stood up splen- 
didly under this yearly barrage of epigrams. With 
his pupils toppling institutions all around him he 
has held his ground firmly and insisted on the en- 
during quality of the fundamental technic of the 
drama. When a pupil brings in a play in favor 
of polygamy, Baker declines to argue but talks in- 
stead about peripety. In other words, Professor 
Baker is wise enough to realize that it is impossible 
that he should furnish, or even attempt to mold in 
any way, the philosophy which his students bring into 
English 47 each year. If it is often a crude philos- 
ophy that is no fault of his. He can't attempt to tell 
the fledgling playwrights what things to say and, of 
course, he doesn't. English 47 is designed almost 
entirely to give a certain conception of dramatic 
form. Professor Baker "tries in the light of histori- 
cal practice to distinguish the permanent from the 
impermanent in technic." He endeavors, "by show- 
ing the inexperienced dramatist how experienced 
dramatists have solved problems similar to his own, 
to shorten a little the time of apprenticeship." 

When a man has done with Baker he has begun 
205 



PIECES OF HATE 

to grasp some of the things he must not do in writing 
a play. With that much ground cleared all that he 
has to do is to acquire a knowledge of life, devise 
a plot and find a manager. 



206 



XLI 

WHAT SHAKESPEARE MISSED 

Next to putting a gold crown upon a man's head 
and announcing, "I create you emperor," no evil 
genius could serve him a worse turn than by giving 
him a blue pencil and saying: "Now you're a cen- 
sor." Unfortunately mankind loves to possess the 
power of sitting in judgment. In some respects the 
life of a censor is more exhilarating than that of an 
emperor. The best the emperor can do is to snip off 
the heads of men and women, who are mere mortals. 
The censor can decapitate ideas which but for him 
might have lived forever. Think, for instance, of 
the extraordinary thrill which might come to a 
matter-of-fact individual living to-day in the city of 
Philadelphia if he happened to be the censor to whom 
the moving-picture version of "Macbeth" was submit- 
ted. His eye would light upon the subtitle "Give me 
the dagger," and, turning to the volume called 
"Rules and Standards," he would find among the 
prohibitions: "Pictures which deal at length with gun 
play, and the use of knives." 

"That," one hears the censor crying in triumph, 
"comes out." 

"But," we may fancy the producer objecting, "you 
207 



PIECES OF HATE 

can't take that out; Shakespeare wrote it, and it be- 
longs in the play." 

"I don't care who wrote it," the censor could an- 
swer. "It can't be shown in Pennsylvania." 

And it couldn't. The little fat man with the blue 
pencil — and censors always become fat in time — can 
stand with both his feet upon the face of posterity; 
he can look Fame in the eye and order her to quit 
trumpeting; he can line his wastebasket with the 
greatest notions which have stirred the mind of man. 
Like Joshua of old, he can command the sun and the 
moon to stand still until they have passed inspection. 
Cleanliness, it has been said, is next to godliness, but 
just behind comes the censor. 

Perhaps you may object that the censor would do 
none of the things mentioned. Perhaps he wouldn't, 
but the Pennsylvania State Board of Censors of 
Motion Pictures has been sufficiently alive to the pos- 
sibilities of what it might want to do in reediting the 
classics to give itself, specifically, supreme authority 
over the judgment and the work of dead masters. 
Under Section 22 of "Standards of the Board" we 
find: 

"That the theme or story of a picture is adapted 
from a publication, whether classical or not; or that 
portions of a picture follow paintings or other illus- 
trations, is not a sufficient reason for the approval of 
a picture or portions of a picture." 

As a matter of fact, it is pretty hard to see just 
how "Macbeth" could possibly come to the screen in 
Pennsylvania. It might be banned on any one of 
several counts. For instance, "Prolonged fighting 

208 



WHAT SHAKESPEARE MISSED 

scenes will be shortened, and brutal fights will be 
wholly disapproved." Nobody can question that the 
murder of Banquo was brutal. "The use of profane 
and objectionable language in subtitles will be dis- 
approved," which would handicap Macduff a good 
deal in laying on in his usual fashion. 

"Gruesome and unduly distressing scenes will be 
disapproved. These include shooting, stabbing, pro- 
fuse bleeding " If Shakespeare had only writ- 
ten with Pennsylvania in mind, Duncan might be still 
alive and Lady Macbeth sleep as well as the next 
one. 

But at this point we recognize another gentleman 
who wishes to protest against any more attacks upon 
motion-picture censorship being made which rest 
wholly on supposition. He has read "Standards of 
the Board," issued by the gentlemen in Pennsylvania, 
and he asserts that all the rules laid down are legiti- 
mate if interpreted with intelligence. 

It will not be necessary to put the whole list of 
rules in evidence since there need be no dispute as to 
the propriety of such rules as prohibit moving pic- 
tures about white slavery and the drug traffic. Skip- 
ping these, we come to No. 5, which is as follows: 

"Scenes showing the modus operandi of criminals 
which are suggestive and incite to evil action, such 
as murder, poisoning, housebreaking, safe robbery, 
pocket picking, the lighting and throwing of bombs, 
the use of ether, chloroform, etc., to render men and 
women unconscious, binding and gagging, will be 
disapproved." 

Here I take the liberty of interrupting for a 
209 



PIECES OF HATE 

moment to protest that the board has framed this rule 
upon the seeming assumption that to see murders, 
robberies, and the rest is to wish at once to emulate 
the criminals. This theory is in need of proving. 
"A good detective story" is the traditional relaxation 
of all men high in power in times of stress, but it is 
not recorded of Roosevelt, Wilson, Secretary of State 
Hughes, Lloyd George, nor of any of the other noted 
devotees of criminal literature that he attempted to 
put into practice any of the things of which he read. 
But to get on with the story: 

"(6) Gruesome and unduly distressing scenes will 
be disapproved. These include shooting, stabbing, 
profuse bleeding, prolonged views of men dying and 
of corpses, lashing and whipping and other torture 
scenes, hangings, lynchings, electrocutions, surgical 
operations, and views of persons in delirium or 
insane." 

Here, of course, a great deal is left to the discre- 
tion of the censors. Just what is "gruesome and 
unduly distressing"? This, I fancy, must depend 
upon the state of the censor's digestion. To a vege- 
tarian censor it might be nothing more than a close- 
up of a beefsteak dinner. To a man living in the 
city which supports the Athletics and the Phillies a 
mere flash of a baseball game might be construed as 
"gruesome and unduly distressing." 

This is another of the rules which puts Shakespeare 
in his place, sweeping out, as it does, both Lear and 
Ophelia. And possibly Hamlet. Was Hamlet mad? 
The Pennsylvania censors will have to take that 
question up in a serious way sooner or later. 

210 



WHAT SHAKESPEARE MISSED 

"(7) Studio and other scenes, in which the human 
form is shown in the nude, or the body is unduly 
exposed, will be disapproved." 

This fails to state whether the prohibition includes 
the reproduction of statues shown publicly and 
familiarly to all comers in our museums. 

Prohibition No. 8, which deals with eugenics, birth 
control and similar subjects, may be passed without 
comment, as it refers rather to news than to feature 
pictures. 

Prohibition No. 9 covers a wide field: 

"Stories or scenes holding up to ridicule and re- 
proach races, classes, or other social groups, as well 
as the irreverent and sacrilegious treatment of re- 
ligious bodies or other things held to be sacred, will 
be disapproved." 

Here we have still another rule which might be 
invoked against Hamlet's coming to the screen, since 
the chance remark, "Something is rotten in the state 
of Denmark," might logically be held to be offensive 
to Scandinavians. "The Merchant of Venice," of 
course, would have no chance, not only as anti- 
Semitic propaganda, but because it holds up money 
lenders, a well-known social group, to ridicule. 

No. 10 briefly forbids pictures which deal with 
counterfeiting, seemingly under the impression that 
if this particular crime is never mentioned the mem- 
bers of the underworld may possibly forget its ex- 
istence. In No. 11 there is the direct prohibition of 
"scenes showing men and women living together with- 
out marriage." Here the greatest difficulty will fall 
upon those film manufacturers who deal in travel 

211 



PIECES OF HATE 

pictures. No exhibitor is safe in flashing upon a 
screen the picture of a cannibal man and woman and 
several little cannibals in front of their hut without 
first ascertaining from the camera man that he went 
inside and inspected the wedding certificate. No. 13 
forbids the use of "profane and objectionable lan- 
guage," which we shall find later has been construed 
to include the simple "Hell." 

Under 15 we find this ruling: "Views of incen- 
diarism, burning, wrecking, and the destruction of 
property, which may put like action into the minds 
of those of evil instincts, or may degrade the morals 
of the young, will be disapproved." 

In other words, Nero may fiddle to his heart's 
content, but he must do it without the inspiration of 
the burning of Rome. Curiously enough, throughout 
all the rules of censorship there runs a continuous 
train of reasoning that the pictures must be adapted 
to the capacity and mentality of the lowest possible 
person who could wander into a picture house. The 
picture-loving public, in the minds of the censors, 
seems to be honeycombed with potential murderers, 
incendiaries, and counterfeiters. Rule No. 16 dis- 
courages scenes of drunkenness, and adds chival- 
rously: "Especially if women have a part in the 
scenes." 

Next we come to a rule which would handicap 
vastly any attempt to reproduce Stevenson or any 
other lover of the picaresque upon the screen. "Pic- 
tures which deal at length with gun play," says Rule 
17, "and the use of knives, and are set in the under- 
world, will be disapproved. Prolonged fighting 

212 



WHAT SHAKESPEARE MISSED 

scenes will be shortened and brutal fights will be 
wholly disapproved." 

What, we wonder, would the censors do with a 
picture about Thermopylae? Would they, we wonder, 
command that resistance be shortened if the picture 
was to escape the ban? The Alamo was another 
fight which dragged on unduly, and Grant was guilty 
of great disrespect in his famous "If it takes all sum- 
mer," not to mention the impudent incitement toward 
the prolongation of a fight in Lawrence's "Don't give 
up the ship." 

No. 19 suggests difficulties in its ban on "sensual 
kissing and love-making scenes." Naturally the 
question arises: "At just what point does a kiss be- 
come sensual?" Here the censors, to their credit, 
have been clear and definite in their ruling. They 
have decided that a kiss remains chaste for ten feet. 
If held upon the screen for as much as an inch above 
this limit, it changes character and becomes sensual. 
Here, at any rate, morality has been measured with 
an exactitude which is rare. 

No. 20 is puzzling. It begins, liberally enough, 
with the announcement that "Views of women smok- 
ing will not be disapproved as such," but then adds 
belatedly that this ruling does not apply if "their 
manner of smoking is suggestive." Suggestive of 
what, I wonder? Perhaps the censors mean that it 
is all right for women to smoke in moving pictures if 
only they don't inhale, but it would have been much 
more simple to have said just that. No. 22 is the 
famous proclamation that the classics, as well as 
other themes, must meet Pennsylvania requirements, 

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PIECES OF HATE 

and in 23 we have a fine general rule which covers 
almost anything a censor may want to do. "Themes 
or incidents in picture stories," it reads, "which are 
designed to inflame the mind to improper adventures, 
or to establish false standards of conduct, coming 
under the foregoing classes, or of other kinds, will 
be disapproved. Pictures will be judged as a whole, 
with a view to their final total effect ; those portraying 
evil in any form which may be easily remembered or 
emulated will be disapproved." 

Perhaps there are still some who remain uncon- 
vinced as to the excesses of censorship. The argu- 
ment may be advanced that nothing is wrong with 
the rules mentioned if only they are enforced with 
discretion and intelligence. In answer to this plea 
the best thing to do would be to consider a few 
of the eliminations in definite pictures which were 
required by the Pennsylvania board and by the one 
in Ohio which operates under a somewhat similar 
set of regulations. An industrial play called "The 
Whistle" was banned in its entirety in Pennsylvania 
under the following ruling: "Disapproved under Sec- 
tion 6 of the Act of 1915. Symbolism of the title 
raises class antagonism and hatred, and throughout 
subtitles, scenes, and incidents have the same effect." 

But most astounding of all was the final observa- 
tion: "Child-labor and factory laws of this State 
would make incident shown impossible." In other 
words, if a thing did not happen in Pennsylvania it 
is assumed not to have happened at all. It is entirely 
possible that the next producer who brings an Indian 
picture to the censors may be asked to eliminate the 

214 



WHAT SHAKESPEARE MISSED 

elephants on the ground that "there aren't any in 
this State." 

The same State ordered out of "Officer Cupid," 
a comedy, a scene in which one of the chief comedians 
was seen robbing a safe, presumably under the sec- 
tion against showing crime upon the stage. 

Most troublesome of all were the changes ordered 
into the screen version of Augustus Thomas's well- 
known play "The Witching Hour." It may be re- 
membered that the villain of this piece was an as- 
sistant district attorney in the State of Kentucky, 
but Pennsylvania would not have him so. It is dif- 
ficult to find any specific justification for this atti- 
tude in the published standards of the State unless 
we assume that a district attorney was classified as 
belonging to the group "other things held to be 
sacred" which were not to be treated lightly. The 
first ruling of the censors in regard to "The Witch- 
ing Hour" ran: "Reel One — Eliminate subtitle 
'Frank Hardmuth, assistant district attorney,' and 
substitute 'Frank Hardmuth, a prosperous attorney.' ' 

Next came: "Reel Two — Eliminate subtitle, 'I can 
give her the best — money, position, and, as far as 
character — I am district attorney now, and before you 
know it I will be the governor,' and substitute: 'I 
can give her the best — money, position, and, as far as 
character — I am now a prosperous attorney, and be- 
fore you know it I will be running for governor.' " 

And again: "Eliminate subtitle: 'Exactly — but 
you have taken an oath to stand by this city,' and sub- 
stitute: 'Exactly, but you have taken an oath to stand 
by the law.' " 

215 



PIECES OF HATE 

This curious complex that even assistant district 
attorneys should be above suspicion ran through the 
entire film. Simpler was the change of the famous 
curtain line which was familiar to all theatergoers of 
New York ten or twelve seasons ago when "The 
Witching Hour" was one of the hits of the season. It 
may be remembered that at the end of the third act 
Frank Hardmuth, then a district attorney and not yet 
reduced to a prosperous attorney, ran into the library 
of the hero to kill him. The hero's name we have 
forgotten, but he was a professional gambler, of a 
high type, who later turned hypnotist. Hardmuth 
thrust a pistol into his stomach, and we can still see 
the picture and hear the line as John Mason turned 
and said: "You can't shoot that gun [and then after 
a long pause] : You can't even hold it." Hardmuth, 
played by George Nash, staggered back and ex- 
claimed, just before the curtain came down: "I'd like 
to know how in Hell you did that to me." It can 
hardly have been equally effective in moving pictures 
after the censor made the caption read: "I'd like to 
know how you did that to me." The original version 
fell under the ban against profanity. 

In Ohio a more recent picture called "The Gilded 
Lily" had not a little trouble. Here the Board of 
Censors curtly ordered: "First Reel — Cut out girl 
smoking cigarette which she takes from man." Seem- 
ingly they did not even stop to consider whether or 
not she smoked it suggestively. And again in the 
third reel came the order: "Cut out all scenes of 
girl's smoking cigarette at table." Most curious of 
all was the order: "Cut out verse with words: 'I'm 

216 



WHAT SHAKESPEARE MISSED 

a little prairie flower growing wilder every hour.' " 
William Vaughn Moody's "The Faith Healer" was 
considered a singularly dignified and moving play in 
its dramatic form, but the picture ran into difficulties, 
as usual, in Pennsylvania. "Eliminate subtitle," 
came the order: 'Your power is not gone because 
you love — but because your love has fallen on one 
unworthy.' ' As this is a fair statement of the idea 
upon which Mr. Moody built his play, it cannot be 
said that anything which the moving-picture pro- 
ducers brought in was responsible. 

Throughout the rest of the world one may thumb 
his nose as a gesture of scorn and contempt, but 
in Pennsylvania this becomes a public menace not to 
be tolerated. "Reel Two" — we find in the records of 
the Board of Censors — "eliminate view of man 
thumbing his nose at lion." 

As a matter of fact, no rule of censorship of any 
sort may be framed so wisely that by and by some 
circumstance will not arise under which it may be 
turned to an absurd use. Any censors must have 
rules. No man can continue to make decisions all 
day long. He must eventually fall back upon the 
bulwark of printed instructions. I observed an in- 
stance of this sort during the war. A rule was passed 
forbidding the mention of any arrivals from America 
in France. An American captain who had brought 
his wife to France ran into this regulation when he 
attempted to cable home to his parents the news that 
he had become the proud parent of a son. "Charles 
Jr. arrived to-day. Weight eight pounds. Everything 
fine," he wrote on the cable blank, only to have it 

217 



PIECES OF HATE 

turned back to him with the information: "We're not 
allowed to pass any messages about arrivals." 

It is almost as difficult for babies to arrive in 
motion-picture stories. Any suggestion which would 
tend to weaken the faith of any one in storks or cab- 
bage leaves is generally frowned upon. For a time 
picture producers felt that they had discovered a safe 
device which would inform adults and create no im- 
pression in the minds of younger patrons, and pic- 
tures were filled with mothers knitting baby clothes. 
This has now been ruled out as quite too shocking. 
"Eliminate scene showing Bobby holding up baby's 
sock," the Pennsylvania body has ruled, "and scene 
showing Bobby standing with wife kissing baby's 
sock." In fact, there is nothing at all to be done ex- 
cept to make all screen babies so many Topsies who 
never were born at all. Even such a simple sen- 
tence as "And Julia Duane faced the most sacred 
duties of a woman's life alone" was barred. 

Like poor Julia Duane, the moving-picture pro- 
ducers have one problem which they must face alone. 
They are confronted with difficulties unknown to the 
publisher of books and the producer of plays. The 
movie man must frame a story which will interest 
grown-ups and at the same time contain nothing which 
will disturb the innocence of the youngest child in the 
audience. At any rate, that is the task to which he 
is held by most censorship boards. The publisher 
of a novel knows that there are certain things which 
he may not permit to reach print without being liable 
to prosecution, but at the same time he knows that he 
is perfectly safe in allowing many things in his book 

218 



WHAT SHAKESPEARE MISSED 

which are not suitable for a four-year-old-child. 
There is no prospect that the four-year-old child will 
read it. Just so when a manager undertakes a pro- 
duction of Ibsen's "Ghosts" it never enters into his 
head just what its effect will be on little boys of three. 
But these same youngsters will be at the picture house, 
and the standards of what is suitable for them must 
be standards of all the others. There should, of 
course, be some way of grading movie houses. There 
should be theaters for children under fourteen, others 
with subjects suitable for spectators from fourteen to 
sixty, and then small select theaters for those more 
than sixty in which caution might be thrown to the 
winds. 

Another of the difficulties of the unfortunate mov- 
ing-picture producer is the fact that censorship bodies 
in various parts of the country have a faculty of sel- 
dom hitting on the same thing as objectionable. There 
is, of course, a National Association of the Motion 
Picture Industry which maintains its own censorship 
through which 92 per cent of all the pictures ex- 
hibited in America are passed, but in addition to 
that Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas, and Maryland have 
State censorship boards, and there are numerous lo- 
cal bodies as well. Cecil B. De Mille complained, 
shortly after his version of Geraldine Farrar in "Car- 
men" was launched, that at that time there were ap- 
proximately thirty-five censorship organizations in the 
United States. These included various State and mu- 
nicipal boards. Every one of these thirty-odd 
organizations censored "Carmen." No two boards 
censored the same thing. In other words, what was 

219 



PIECES OF HATE 

morally acceptable to New York was highly immoral 
in Pennsylvania. What Pennsylvania might see with 
impunity was considered dangerous to the citizens of 
an adjoining State. 

Of course the question at issue is whether the po- 
tential immoral picture shall first be shown at the 
producer's or the exhibitor's risk, or whether censor- 
ship shall come first before there has been any public 
showing. The contention is made by some of the 
moving-picture people that they should have the same 
freedom given to people who deal in print to publish 
first and take the consequences later if any statute 
has been violated. The right to free speech, in fact, 
has been invoked in favor of the motion picture as 
a medium of expression. This view had the sup- 
port of the late Mayor Gaynor, an excellent jurist, but 
apparently it is not the view held by various State 
courts which have passed upon the constitutionality 
of censorship laws. When the aldermen of New York 
City passed an ordinance providing for the censor- 
ship of movies Mayor Gaynor wrote: "If this ordi- 
nance is legal, then a similar ordinance in respect of 
the newspapers and the theaters generally would be 
legal. Once revive the censorship and there is no 
telling how far we may carry it." 

No matter what the law, the real basis of censorship 
is the public itself. Persons who feel that tighter 
lines of censorship must be drawn and new bodies 
established go on the theory that there is a great 
demand for the salacious moving-picture show. But 
there is no continuing appeal in dirt in the theater. 
It does not permanently sell the biggest of the maga- 

220 



WHAT SHAKESPEARE MISSED 

zines or the newspapers. And naturally it is not a 
paying commodity to the moving-picture men. The 
best that the censor can do is to guess what will be 
offensive to the general public. The general public 
can be much more accurate in its reactions. It knows. 
And it is prepared to stay away from the dirty show 
in droves. 



221 



XLII 

CENSORING THE CENSOR 

Mice and canaries were sometimes employed in 
France to detect the presence of gas. When these 
little things began to die in their cages the soldiers 
knew that the air had become dangerous. Some 
such system should be devised for censorship to make 
it practical. Even with the weight of authority be- 
hind him no bland person, with virtue obviously 
unruffled, is altogether convincing when he announces 
that the book he has just read or the moving picture 
he has seen is so hideously immoral that it consti- 
tutes a danger to the community. For my part I 
always feel that if he can stand it so can I. To the 
best of my knowledge and belief, Mr. Sumner was 
not swayed from his usual course of life by so much 
as a single peccadillo for all of Jurgen. His indigna- 
tion was altogether altruistic. He feared for the fate 
of weaker men and women. 

Every theatrical manager, every motion picture 
producer, and every publisher knows, to his sorrow, 
that the business of estimating the effect of any piece 
of imaginative work upon others is precarious and 
uncertain. Genius would be required to predict ac- 
curately the reaction of the general public to any 
set piece which seems immoral to the censor. For 

222 



CENSORING THE CENSOR 

instance, why was Mr. Sumner so certain that Jurgen, 
which inspired him with horror and loathing, would 
prove a persuasive temptation to all the rest of the 
world? Censorship is serious and drastic business; 
it should never rest merely upon guesswork and more 
particularly not upon the guesses of men so staunch 
in morals that they are obviously of distant kin to 
the rest of humanity. 

The censor should be a person of a type capable of 
being blasted for the sins of the people. His job 
can be elevated to dignity only when the world real- 
izes that he runs horrid risks. If we should choose 
our censors from fallible folk we might have proof 
instead of opinions. Suppose the censor of Jurgen 
had been some one other than Mr. Sumner, some one 
so unlike the head of the vice society that after 
reading Mr. Cabell's book he had come out of his 
room, not quivering with rage, but leering and 
wearing vine leaves. In such case the rest would be 
easy. It would merely be necessary to shadow the 
censor until he met his first dryad. His wink would 
be sufficient evidence and might serve as a cue for 
the rescuers to rush forward and save him. Of 
course there would then be no necessity for legal 
proceedings in regard to the book. Expert testimony 
as to its possible effects would be irrelevant. We 
would know and we could all join cheerfully in the 
bonfire. 

To my mind there are three possible positions 
which may logically be taken concerning censorship. 
It might be entrusted to the wisest man in the world, 
to a series of average men, — or be abolished. Un- 

223 



PIECES OF HATE 

fortunately it has been our experience that there is a 
distinct affinity between fools and censorship. It 
seems to be one of those treading grounds where 
they rush in. To be sure, we ought to admit a preju- 
dice at the outset and acknowledge that we were a 
reporter in France during the war at a time when 
censors seemed a little more ridiculous than usual. 
We still remember the young American lieutenant 
who held up a story of a boxing match in Saint-Na- 
zaire because the reporter wrote, "In the fourth round 
MacBeth landed a nice right on the Irishman's nose 
and the claret began to flow." "I'm sorry," said the 
censor, "but we have strict orders from Major Palmer 
that no mention of wine or liquor is to be allowed in 
any story about the American army." 

Nor have we forgotten the story of General 
Petain's mustache. "Why," asked Junius Wood of 
the Globe, "have you held up my story? All the 
rest have gone." 

"Unfortunately," answered the courteous French- 
man, "you have twice used the expression General 
Petain's 'white mustache.' I might stretch a point 
and let you say 'gray mustache,' but I should much 
prefer to have you say 'blond mustache.' ' 

"Oh, make it green with purple spots," said Junius. 

The use of average men in censorship would neces- 
sitate sacrifices to the persuasive seduction of im- 
morality, as I have suggested, and moreover there 
are very few average men. Accordingly, I am 
prepared to abandon that plan of censorship. The 
wisest man in the world is too old and two busy with 
his plays and has announced that he will never come 

224 



CENSORING THE CENSOR 

to America. Accordingly we venture to suggest that 
in time of peace we try to get along without any 
censorship of plays or books or moving pictures. I 
have no desire, of course, to leave Mr. Sumner un- 
employed — it would 'perhaps be only fair to allow 
him to slosh around among the picture post cards. 

Once official censorship had been officially abol- 
ished, a strong and able censorship would imme- 
diately arise consisting of the playgoing and read- 
ing public. It is a rather offensive error to assume 
that the vast majority of folk in America are rarin' 
to get to dirty books and dirty plays. It is the 
experience of New York managers that the run of 
the merely salacious play is generally short. The 
success which a few nasty books have had has been 
largely because of the fact that they came close to 
the line of things which are forbidden. Without the 
prohibition there would be little popularity. 

To save myself from the charge of hypocrisy I 
should add that personally I believe there ought to 
be a certain amount of what we now know as immoral 
writing. It would do no harm in a community 
brought up to take it or let it alone. It is well enough 
for the reading public and the critic to use terms 
such as moral or immoral, but they hardly belong in 
the vocabulary of an artist. I have heard it said 
that before Lucifer left Heaven there were no such 
things as virtues and vices. The world was equipped 
with a certain number of traits which were qualities 
without distinction or shame. But when Lucifer 
and the heavenly hosts drifted into their eternal war- 
fare it was agreed that each side should recruit an 

225 



PIECES OF HATE 

equal number of these human, and at that time un- 
classified, qualities. A coin was tossed and, whether 
by fair chance or sharp miracle, Heaven won. 

"I choose Blessedness," said the Captain of the 
Angels. It should be explained that the selection 
was made without previous medical examination, and 
Blessedness seemed at that time a much more robust 
recruit than he has since turned out to be. A ten- 
dency to flat foot is always hard to detect. 

"Give me Beauty," said Lucifer, and from that 
day to this the artists of the world have been divided 
into two camps — those who wished to achieve beauty 
and those who wished to achieve blessedness, those 
who wanted to make the world better and those who 
were indifferent to its salvation if they could only 
succeed in making it a little more personable. 

However, the conflict is not quite so simple as 
that. Late in the afternoon when the Captain of the 
Angels had picked Unselfishness and Moderation 
and Faith and Hope and Abstinence, and Lucifer 
had called to his side Pride and Gluttony and Anger 
and Lust and Tactlessness, there remained only two 
more qualities to be apportioned to the contending 
sides. One of them was Sloth, who was obviously 
overweight, and the other was a furtive little fellow 
with his cap down over his eyes. 

"What's your name?" said the Captain of the 
Angels. 

"Truth," stammered the little fellow. 

"Speak up," said the Captain of the Angels so 
sharply that Lucifer remonstrated, saying, "Hold on 
there ; Anger's on my side." 

226 



CENSORING THE CENSOR 

"Truth," said the little fellow again but with the 
same somewhat indistinct utterance which has always 
been so puzzling to the world. 

"I don't understand you," said the Captain of the 
Angels, "but if it's between you and Sloth I'll take a 
chance with you. Stop at the locker room and get 
your harp and halo." 

Now to-day even Lucifer will admit, if you get 
him in a corner, that Truth is the mightiest warrior 
of them all. The only trouble is his truancy Some- 
times he can't be found for centuries. Then he will 
bob up unexpectedly, break a few heads, and skip 
away. Nothing can stand against him. Lucifer's 
best ally, Beauty, is no match for him. Truth holds 
every decision. But the trouble is that he still keeps 
his cap down over his eyes, and he still mumbles his 
words, and nobody knows him until he is at least fifty 
years away and moving fast. At that distance he 
seems to grow bigger, and he invariably reaches into 
his back pocket and puts on his halo so that people 
can recognize him. Still, when he comes along the 
next time and is face to face with any man of this 
world, the mortal is pretty sure to say, "Your face is 
familiar but I can't seem to place you." 

There is no denying that he isn't a good mixer. 
But for that he would be an excellent censor. 



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